


delicate

by lantur



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Child Neglect, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Ishval Civil War, Ishvalan Reconstruction, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Slow Burn, Trauma, Women in the Military
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:14:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 22
Words: 264,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25062988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lantur/pseuds/lantur
Summary: Riza's upbringing leaves her with scars. A Riza Hawkeye character study, spanning from Riza's very early childhood to the events of fma:b and beyond.
Relationships: Berthold Hawkeye & Riza Hawkeye, Grumman & Riza Hawkeye, Rebecca Catalina & Riza Hawkeye, Riza Hawkeye/Roy Mustang
Comments: 1432
Kudos: 739





	1. one

Riza’s father begins teaching her alchemy a week after her fifth birthday. He brings her into his study, one of the two places in the house that she’s never been allowed to enter. She’s so excited, though she tries to settle herself. She tries to stay calm, like her father is always telling her to do when he comes upstairs for dinner every night. “Settle down,” or “Calm down,” he instructs, giving her a look like he’s not happy with her. 

Her mother shakes her head. “She’s just a child, Berthold. It’s what children do.” But Riza sits still and falls silent anyway. She wants him to be happy with her. 

Her father pulls an extra chair over to the desk, now, and Riza sits in it. It’s too big for her. She listens as he starts telling her about alchemy, about what it is and how it works. She tries her best to pay attention, like she does at school. Miss Nadia told her mother, just last week, that Riza is a _model student._ Miss Nadia had smiled, and Mother had beamed and told her how proud she was. They had stopped in town on their way home for ice cream at the shop, and it had been one of the best days that Riza can remember.

She quickly learns that her father’s lessons are harder than any of her lessons in school. They’re boring, too. Nothing like writing or math or reading. Riza makes herself pay attention anyway. She hardly spends any time with Father. She doesn’t do anything with him like she does with Mother - sitting side-by-side at the piano, or kneading dough for bread, or picking vegetables from the garden and watering the plants together. 

“Why doesn’t Father come play? _”_ Riza asks, once, as they pluck bell peppers together. The peppers are a pretty bright green, warm under her hands, warm from the sun. They smell good when she leans in to sniff them.

Her mother’s hand stills on one of the peppers, for just an instant. “He’s busy with his work, sweetheart.” Then her hand twists on the pepper, breaking it free of the stem. She turns to Riza and smiles, bright as the sun, underneath her wide-brimmed straw hat. “Besides, it’s nice for us to spend time together, isn’t it?”

Riza agrees immediately. She prefers her mother’s company to the company of the other children in town. Her mother is always kind, and she never teases.

Her mother had been happy when Father told her that he wanted to teach Riza alchemy. She looked between Father and Riza, her features softening with relief. “Good. It’ll be good for the two of you, to have that to share.” 

So Riza tries her hardest at her lessons, which take place on the weekends and a few times a week, after school. She remembers Father’s words about alchemy and repeats them back to him as best as she can. She fills page after page with the circles he asks her to draw. 

Father nods at her whenever she repeats something back to him correctly. He pats her on the shoulder, and he smiles - he actually smiles - when she answers his questions right. It makes Riza feel warm inside, and as happy as when she and Mother read together at night before bed. 

“She has potential,” Father tells Mother, over dinner one evening. “She’s quite clever. She has a good grasp on the theory, considering her age. We’ll start working on actual practice tomorrow.” 

Mother glances at her, and Riza sees a hint of worry in her eyes. “Is it safe?”

Father’s reply is quick. “Of course. I was her age when I began basic transmutation.” He looks at her. “Riza. You would like to start learning transmutations, wouldn’t you?”

She’ll be like Father then, able to make special things happen after just drawing a circle. He will be so happy with her. He’ll smile, and maybe he’ll walk with her and Mother to the ice cream shop in town. Riza grabs a handful of the fabric of her skirt and squeezes it to keep from squirming in her seat out of excitement, and she nods. 

-

Riza barely sleeps that night. She thinks of turning water into ice and freezing the pond so that Mother can take her skating on it. She thinks of taking a chunk of wood and turning into a new stuffed dog that can be a friend for the stuffed dog she has now, Maisie. When she finally falls asleep, she dreams of using alchemy to turn all the grass in the meadow behind their house into flowers, turning the field of green into a field of bright yellows and pinks.

-

The lesson doesn’t go well.

As hard as Riza tries, as neat as she draws the circles and the triangles inside them, as much as she thinks and concentrates, the special things don’t happen. She isn’t able to freeze the glass of water. She isn’t able to melt the large ice pack her father sets on the desk. She isn’t able to make the plank of wood move an inch, let alone transform itself into a ball. 

Father tries to be patient with her, like Mother is patient with her when she is clumsy, like Miss Nadia is patient with her when she gets her sums wrong in class. “Try again, Riza,” he urges. “You’re not concentrating hard enough. None of these transmutations are difficult.”

Riza keeps trying. Her head hurts. She’s hungry and thirsty. Father had sent Mother away when she knocked on the door with sandwiches and lemonade, telling her that they would come and eat in just a little while. 

Every time she tries and nothing happens, Father’s face grows more strained and shuttered. His words of encouragement grow shorter, until he’s talking to her like the neighbors down the street talk to their dog. Short, sharp words. _Try again. Again. Do it again._ It makes Riza nervous. Her stomach starts to hurt. Her hand shakes when she draws the circles, and they don’t come out right. Something inside her feels tight and uncomfortable and she wants to cry, but Father doesn’t like it when she cries. 

When Riza tries to freeze the water again and nothing happens, Father shoves his chair back from the desk and stands up and stalks out of the study, cursing under his breath.

Riza stares after him, bewildered. “Father?” she calls softly.

Father doesn’t come back. She starts to cry.

-

Things are blurry after that, like how it gets when it’s foggy outside. Riza’s mother finds her in the study. She holds her and strokes her hair and whispers comforting words. Mother takes her to her room, tucks her in bed, brings her a plate of sandwiches and a tall glass of lemonade. She makes Riza eat, and reads her a story while she does. She presses a soft kiss to Riza’s cheek. “Get some rest, sweetheart,” she says, and smiles a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes.

Riza nestles against her pillow and closes her eyes. Mother leaves, shutting the door behind her.

She drifts into an uneasy sleep, with bad dreams. She thinks she hears Mother and Father shouting at each other, but she isn’t sure whether it’s part of the bad dreams or not. 

-

Father doesn’t eat dinner with them that night.

-

There are no more alchemy lessons with Father after that. He doesn’t take much notice of her anymore. It hurts. It makes Riza sad sometimes, but Mother is so kind to her and so sweet, that most of the time she can forget about it.

-

Autumn comes, and half of her classmates get sick with something that Miss Nadia and Mother call influenza. “It’s particularly bad, this year,” Miss Nadia murmurs to Mother one day after school, while Riza is collecting her books from her desk.

Mother nods. “I heard that Franklin Peters and Lisa Meyer both passed within a week of falling ill, and both of them barely in their forties--”

They both look at her then, notice her watching them and listening, and they fall silent. 

Miss Nadia becomes ill too, later that month, and there are no classes for two weeks. When she comes back, she is much thinner and pale, with dark circles underneath her eyes. 

Autumn fades into winter. People keep getting sick. Catherine’s father dies. Robert’s eldest brother dies. Riza listens to her classmates and tries not to feel scared. She’s five and not a little girl anymore, but she clings to Mother extra hard every morning when Mother drops her off at school, and every afternoon after school, and every night when she gets her hugs. 

“You won’t get sick, will you?” Riza asks one afternoon, as they’re walking home from school. 

Mother looks down at her and tries to smile. “Of course not, sweetheart. And even if I do, I’ll get better. I promise.”

-

Mother comes down with a cough a week later. 

-

There are months and seasons of nothing but hurting and loneliness. Mother had pleaded with her not to cry, in the last days before the worst day, but Riza cries every night. She can’t help it. She misses walks and cooking and being in the garden with Mother, and reading together, and being hugged and held. 

It’s just her and Father now. He doesn’t talk to her like Mother did, or play with her or tell her stories. (Riza knows better than to bother him by showing him her drawings.) He doesn’t hold her hand or hug her. He just says _Come and eat dinner_ and _Did you do your schoolwork?_ After they eat a quiet dinner together, he goes away to his study. 

Riza reads by herself and draws by herself, and goes into the garden by herself. She waters the plants like Mother did, and pulls at the weeds too. She sits at the piano by herself, pressing her fingers on the keys, hearing the notes echo in the silent house. She wraps her arms around herself, hugging herself tight. She interlaces her fingers with each other and strokes her own hair. It isn’t the same. 

Riza thinks that she would give anything, even her stuffed dog Maisie, to hear Mother’s voice again. 

School is the only place where she feels good, for just a little while. Miss Nadia has always been almost as sweet as Mother, but she becomes even nicer in that time after. She always says nice things about Riza’s work. She tells her that she’s done an excellent job with her sums today, or that her reading assignment had been wonderfully done, or that she had been a good assistant, helping her collect worksheets after the science lesson. 

Riza holds the words close, treasuring them. She thinks about those kind words when she’s sitting alone at the kitchen table after school, working through her assignments. She resolves to do good, be good, so that tomorrow, Miss Nadia will say something nice to her again. 

-

Her classmates don’t just tease her for being quiet, and having short hair, and being poor, and having a freak for a father, anymore. They start to call her the _teacher’s pet_ , and the epithet sticks. Riza’s face gets red and hot when they call her that, but she tries to ignore them as best as she can. 

-

The days, months, and years pass. Every day is much the same. Her father doesn’t seem to notice birthdays - not Riza’s own, not Mother’s, not the anniversary of the day that Riza still can’t bear to think about. 

Riza picks flowers from the meadow and takes them to Mother’s grave on her birthday every year. She celebrates her own birthdays quietly. There’s no point in baking a cake for one, but she buys a little dish of ice cream from the shop and takes it to the meadow, sitting among the flowers. 

She is seven when she finds her mother’s recipe book in a drawer in the kitchen. Riza reads it from cover to cover, tracing the words on the pages with her fingertips. She reads it over and over again. That weekend, she dares asking Father for money to take to the market to buy groceries. Father’s cooking is sparse and simple. Rice and eggs and beans and lentils, mostly. He doesn’t make any of the things that Mother used to, and Riza misses eating her mother’s food. 

Father gives her three hundred cenz. Riza takes the wicker basket from the closet, puts the recipe book into the basket, and walks to the market alone. She tries not to remember walking this path with Mother. She gets to the market and peers at the signs, and picks out plump purple eggplants, red tomatoes and peppers, orange squash and carrots, and green beans and peas. She uses the money left over to buy chicken and venison. 

It’s a struggle to carry everything back home, and she has to take a couple of breaks along the way. Cooking takes an even longer time, almost two hours. Riza is careful not to cut her fingers when she slices the vegetables and the meat with a big knife she had found in a drawer. She studies the spices in the cabinet, all housed in little glass jars. Salt, pepper, paprika, cumin, chicory, cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, anise. She reads the names aloud to herself. 

It’s six in the evening and Riza is starving by the time that dinner is finished. She ladles the chicken stew into one bowl for Father and one bowl for herself, and goes to get him. They sit down at the table together, and Riza closes her eyes after taking the first bite of the stew. She has to dig her fingernails into her palms to keep from crying. It tastes just like what Mother used to make. 

Father eats in silence, as he always does. He doesn’t look like he is going to cry. But when his bowl is empty, he looks at her and nods. “You did a good job, Riza,” he says.

The words make her feel warm inside. She can’t remember the last time he had told her that she was good. Riza smiles, ducking her head shyly. “Thank you, Father.”

-

Riza cooks dinner every evening after that. 

-

Her father takes to eating dinner alone in his study, when Riza is eight. She eats alone, a book propped open in front of her. 

Two months after her twelfth birthday, when Riza knocks on her father’s study door to deliver his dinner, he tells her he will be taking on an alchemy apprentice. A boy from Central City, four years her senior. 

Her first instinct is to be apprehensive. She’s never had the best experiences with her classmates. But the apprenticeship fees will be helpful. Father has been giving her less money for groceries for a while now, and Riza has seen the letters coming from the bank about the manor. So she nods her assent. 

Father closes the door to his study, and she turns and walks back to the kitchen. 

-

Roy Mustang arrives a week later. He is given the bedroom across from hers, and he becomes a quiet, unobtrusive constant in Riza’s life. For the first time in four years, she doesn’t have to eat dinner alone every night. He eats dinner at the kitchen table with her, both of them studying out of their own textbooks. He washes the dishes every single night, which Riza finds baffling at first. And he cleans the kitchen, wiping down the counters and the stove, even scrubbing the oven. “You cooked for us _,_ ” Roy says, by way of explanation, as he rolls his shirtsleeves up to the elbows. “So this is the least I can do.” 

Sometimes, on the weekends, he runs into her while she’s working around the house, tending to all the chores and tasks and repairs that need to be attended to. Roy transmutes scrap metal into new doorknobs and window latches that she uses to replace the broken ones. He uses his alchemy to help her tend to the gardens, taming the vines creeping up the house, and the overgrown grass and weeds. He even helps her mop the floors with water alchemy.

“Thank you,” Riza says, feeling a bit shy. Part of her wonders, if it’s so easy for Roy to do these things, why her father couldn’t have helped her with any of them. 

Roy shrugs, lifting a hand to tousle his long, unruly hair, which he does often. “It’s no problem. It’s good practice for me, anyway, and you shouldn’t have to do everything alone.” 

Roy wanders off, heading upstairs to her father’s study, undoubtedly to retrieve another of his textbooks. Riza watches him go. 

-

It takes remarkably little time for her to develop a terrible, painful crush on her father’s apprentice. Riza suffers it in silence, of course. She lies in bed at night and thinks of the way Roy smiles when she makes tea for the both of them, and how enthusiastically he devours her noodles in peanut sauce, and something in her chest tightens to the point of being agonizing. 

She wants - she isn’t sure what she wants. Riza has seen her classmates holding hands with one another, or hugging, or exchanging little kisses on the cheek. It makes her feel wistful on the best days, and nearly choked with envy on the worst. No one has held her hand or kissed her cheek or hugged her since Mother, and sometimes she misses being touched so much it hurts. (She still wraps her arms around herself and hugs herself sometimes, when she’s alone in her room.) 

But those things certainly aren’t possible with Roy. He’s so much older than her, and her father’s apprentice besides. She shouldn’t even be thinking about this. It makes her skin prickle with embarrassment and shame. 

Riza wishes she could talk to her mother. She wonders what Mother would say.

-

Roy leaves for the military academy three months after Riza turns fourteen. She misses him terribly, and it’s not even because of the stupid crush on him she had never been able to shake. It’s just that the house feels so quiet and empty again. She misses Roy’s company at the kitchen table over dinner, his dark head bent over his alchemy textbooks. She misses the way he would help her with her chores, and chat with her about what she was studying at school. 

Riza is sitting at the kitchen table, alone, working through her history assignment, when she hears the floorboards behind her creak. She turns, startled. Father is standing in the doorway, watching her. She has seen less and less of him, over the time Roy had been with them. It’s rare that he leaves his study at all. Roy had told her once that Father went out to the manor’s grounds late at night or in the very early hours of the morning to conduct alchemical experiments, but she has never been able to stay awake long enough to see it. 

“Father?” Riza closes her textbook, and half rises to her feet. “Is there something wrong?”

Father looks at her as if she’s a mathematical sum to be solved, and then he turns away. “Come to the study with me.”

Riza follows in his footsteps, swallowing down her nerves. She can’t have done anything to displease him. Her marks have been excellent at school, as they have always been, and she’s been keeping up with the house. A wild, irrational thought arises, and she wonders whether, because Roy is gone, because he had disappointed Father so, he’s going to try to teach her alchemy again. She’s older, now, and smarter. She knows how he feels about the military. She wouldn’t let him down like Roy had. 

It’s stupid and childish, the hope that leaps inside her. The hope is mingled with fear, tangled so closely together that she can’t separate them. 

There is a second chair pulled up to her father’s desk in the study, and the sight of it brings back so many long-forgotten memories. Father gestures for her to sit, and Riza does, her heart in her throat, smoothing her skirt down as she sits. He joins her, sitting across from her, almost knee to knee. She can’t remember the last time he had been this close to her. The proximity makes her happy and nervous at the same time. 

“I’ve finished my research,” Father says, without preamble.

It takes a moment for Riza to remember what Roy had mentioned to her last, about the research her father was working on - had been working on, for years. He had refused to teach Roy what he knew, and that had triggered a massive fight between them. “The research into Flame Alchemy?”

Her voice is small. Tentative. Father nods, and looks out the window, a faraway expression on his face. “It’s surpassed my expectations. It’s unlike anything the world has ever seen before.”

“Congratulations.” The word falls flat, pitifully inadequate. Riza shifts in her seat self-consciously. She is too aware that Roy would have known what to say. Roy would have understood the implications of this. Roy knew how to relate to Father; shared a passion for the one thing Father truly loved - alchemy. 

Father regards her evenly. “Thank you.” He hesitates, for just a fraction of a second. “I would like to entrust my research to you, for safekeeping.”

Riza blinks, and she wonders if she had heard him correctly. “Me?” she repeats, stupidly.

Father doesn’t grace that with a reply. “Over time, I’ve come to realize that Flame Alchemy will only cause tragedy if I place it into the wrong hands.” He stands, walking to the window, and folds his arms behind his back. “I can’t take any chances when it comes to whom I entrust with this knowledge. Will you be the guardian of my research, Riza? Now and in all the years to come?” 

She almost jumps when he says her name. “Of course.” Riza can’t help but stammer on the words. The disbelief is still there, but there’s a sudden, fiery surge of pride within her, followed by quiet contentment. Father had chosen her to pass his beloved research on to, to guard and keep safe. He had chosen _her,_ not Roy. Maybe, all this time, Father has actually seen how diligent and dutiful she has been, how hard she has worked. “Thank you, Father. I promise I’ll keep it safe for as long as you want me to.”

Father nods, satisfaction written on his face. “Good. I’m glad to hear it.”

Riza glances at the books lining the shelves; on the leather-bound journal on the desk. “There’s a loose floorboard in my room. I can hide your research journal underneath that.”

Father exhales, and Riza sees a flicker of the old disappointment, of impatience, of _pity,_ in his eyes. She falls silent mid-sentence, her stomach plummeting. “I can’t commit the Flame Alchemy research to paper,” Father explains, slowly, like he’s talking to a child. “It’s much too sensitive. My notes could be found, copied, distributed… No. That wouldn’t do.”

Riza frowns. “I don’t understand,” she confesses. “Would you like me to memorize it?” And her hands twist together in her lap, because she’s good at memorizing, but complex alchemy is a different thing entirely than regular science and history and mathematics. 

“No. You couldn’t.” There’s the slightest emphasis on the second word, and Riza tries not to flinch. She misses Mother, and Roy, with sharp, sudden intensity. Neither of them ever did that. Neither of them ever said anything or did anything to make her feel like she wasn’t good enough. 

Father sighs. “The research will be encoded onto your skin, in ink.” He looks her over, a long look, and the dim light leaves his eyes in shadow. “Your back, most likely. It’s always covered by clothing, and it’s the biggest canvas on your body. The alchemical array is detailed, so I’ll need the space. We can begin this weekend, though it will be several days before the work is completed.”

Riza’s skin crawls, and she rubs her arms unconsciously. Father leaves the window and walks to the door, a clear dismissal, but she can’t bring herself to stand. A tattoo, on her back? A needle driving into her skin, over and over and over again? It will hurt. She can’t even imagine how much. 

And Father had wanted her to keep it secret from others, keep it covered - now, and for all the years to come. She won’t be able to wear her summer dresses anymore, with their thin straps and low backs, or her swimsuit to swim in the lake. She won’t be able to--

She knows about sex; her classmates talk about it often enough. It’s the last thing she should be wondering about at a time like this. It’s indecent to even be contemplating it. But she stays rooted to the chair, frozen. 

“Riza,” Father prompts. 

Riza stands. Her legs feel slightly unsteady underneath her. The _no_ is on her lips, the plea for him to find another way. But then she looks at him, and she realizes that this is something she _can_ do for him. She can’t memorize the alchemical array like Roy would have been able to. She can’t keep his knowledge safe in her mind, and not on her body. She can’t learn the alchemy herself, like Roy would have been able to. She can’t carry on Father’s legacy in the way that both of them had wanted, once. 

This is the only thing she can do to help him. And Riza can’t bear to say _no,_ to see that disappointment in Father’s eyes again. She wants to see him happy. She wants him to look at her the way he had before, with satisfaction on his face. She wants to make him proud, and content in the knowledge that his life’s work is in safe hands with her. Maybe that will finally change things for him. Maybe then he can rest easy and stop being - the way he is. 

“Yes.” Riza clasps her hands in front of her. “I’ll be here, first thing in the morning on Saturday.”

Father pats her on the shoulder on her way out. She can’t remember the last time he had touched her. “Good girl.”

It’s the first bit of praise he’s given her in nine years. It’s as stunning, as unexpected, as a punch to the stomach. The words are short and more appropriate for a girl a decade younger than she is, but they are so _sweet,_ and she just wants to hear them again. Riza stops mid-step and gazes up at him, but Father is already turning away, shutting the door, leaving her alone in the hallway. 

Riza makes her way back to the kitchen, her steps slow.

-

Father takes her to his bedroom on Saturday morning. Riza had hardly been able to sleep the night before, for fear of the pain. Her eyes ache, and there is a dull throbbing in her forehead. Her fingers are clumsy as she unbuttons her top and shrugs it off.

“Lie facedown,” Father instructs. He’s at the desk, preparing the needle and the ink. Riza had caught the briefest glimpse of both when she had entered the room. Her palms had grown damp with sweat at the sight of the needle, impossibly long and sharp, and at the pot of ink. She’s only ever seen black tattoos before, on the arms of the grocer and the butcher, but this ink is different - it’s a dark, rusty, blood-red. “You can put your face against the pillows if that would be more comfortable.”

Riza settles herself on the bed somewhat awkwardly. She can’t figure out what to do with her arms. She ends up putting them underneath her, her palms resting on the cool sheets underneath the pillow.

She hears Father approach, standing over her. “You’ll need to take that off.” He sounds preoccupied. “I can’t work around it. If I try, the blank spaces will make the array incoherent.”

Riza’s cheeks burn as she unhooks her bra, and settles herself back in place. She feels Father bend over her, his breath light and warm on her back. They haven’t been able to afford indoor heating for years, and there’s a chill in the air this morning. 

“I’m going to start,” he warns. “It’s very important that you hold still.”

“Yes, Father.” Riza tries to sound brave, but her voice trembles. She closes her eyes, steeling herself for the first prick of the needle on her back. 

Her efforts aren’t good enough. The needle sinks into the nape of her neck, and it feels like a burn, like a sting, more than a prick. Riza cries out, flinching, curling into herself. Then she feels the pressure of Father’s palm on her shoulder blade, pressing her flat against the bed. “Hold still,” he orders. His tone brooks no argument. 

Riza does. She tries not to stiffen up, tries not to shake or flinch, as he sinks the needle into her skin again and again and again. Her eyes burn. She’s never experienced pain like this in her life, not even when she had fallen out of that tree when she was five and scraped her arm raw and bloody. Not even when her menstrual cramps had been so bad, a few months ago, that it had felt like someone was digging around in her lower abdomen with a heated fire poker. 

_Stop,_ she wants to say. _Please stop_. But Father has only been working for a few minutes. He’s just begun, and Riza can’t imagine how disappointed he would be if she made him stop now. She doesn’t want to disappoint him. Not again. She tries to focus on the feeling of his left hand on her skin, bracing himself and providing support, rather than on the piercing pain of the needle he wields in his right hand.

Riza closes her eyes and grits her teeth. She thinks of Mother sitting at her side, stroking her hair, whispering to her, _It’s all right, sweetheart. Be brave._

That is the only thing that gets her through. Even when the needle feels like it passes over her bones, making them vibrate, making her feel nauseated with the pain. She thinks about leaving this room, and going to the kitchen, except instead of being alone there, there will be Mother standing near the stove, kneading dough for bread.

Riza has no concept of how long it lasts. There are no breaks, except for the brief moments of respite she gets when he refills the needle with ink. Finally, at long last, he pulls away from her. “That will do for today.” She can hear the weariness in him, but he seems pleased, too. 

Riza tries to sit up, moving carefully, to preserve her modesty. The skin on her back feels raw, and the pillowcase under her face is wet with tears and sweat. It’s dark outside. Now that she’s had a few moments of freedom from the pain, she realizes that she feels achy and hollow with hunger. Father’s hand rests on her shoulder, easing her back down, with more gentleness this time. “Stay where you are. I need to clean and bandage the area.” 

He wipes her upper back with a damp washcloth, and then rubs an ointment heavily scented with herbs into her skin. His movements are slow and gentle, his fingers gliding over her shoulder blades. Riza closes her eyes, relaxing into the touch, her breath halting, shuddering. It feels so good to be touched like this. It makes her remember how Mother used to rub her back at night. She had missed that. 

This makes the pain that had come earlier worth it.

-

The tattoo takes the better part of a week to complete. Riza bears the pain (both during the tattooing, and after) as stoically as she can. Her movements are stunted and tentative, her range of motion altered, her sleep suffering. And that’s before the scabbing begins, and with it, the unbearable itching. 

But Father spends more time with her than he ever has before, inspecting the tattoo as it heals, rubbing ointment into her back twice a day. Riza goes into the bathroom at night and takes off her top, and inspects her back in the mirror, the circles and triangles and runes and intricate lettering that covers her skin. 

It stretches from the nape of her neck to the very small of her back. It’s so _big,_ bigger than she had realized it would be. Despite the moisturizing, it’s still scabby, and angry rust-red. Maybe an alchemist would find the intricate design beautiful, but Riza misses her back as it was, pale and unmarred. 

She reaches over her shoulder and brushes her fingertips against the patterns of ink. She remembers Father’s words, at the end of each session, the weight of his hand on her shoulder after she had gotten dressed again. _Good girl, Riza._ She holds the words just as closely as she had held her teacher's praise as a little girl. She thinks about them every night before bed. 

Riza doesn’t regret it. She would do it all over again, if she had to. 

-

She had hoped that finalizing his research and encoding it on her back, where it would be safe, would help Father. It doesn’t. A year passes, then two, and if anything, he seems to get worse. He leaves the bowls of food that she delivers to his study every night half-eaten at first, and then mostly untouched. When Riza tries to enquire (stammering on the words) if there’s anything else she can prepare that he might like better, he barely responds.

Sometimes, when she walks past his study, she hears him coughing. This isn’t a light, occasional dry cough like the one Riza gets in springtime. It’s heavy, hacking, and the fits go on for ages before they subside. It sounds almost like the cough that her mother had developed in her last days. The first time she hears it, walking past the study, Riza sees spots of darkness explode into her vision. She leans against the wall and slides to the floor, unable to catch her breath. It’s like she’s not sixteen anymore, but five, walking down this same hallway, her mother’s wracking cough echoing in the air. 

It’s a long time before she is able to stand again.

Week after week, month after month, Father brushes off her questions about whether he is all right. When Riza dares to suggest that he visit the local physician, he snaps at her, and glares with such intensity that she retreats from the study, terrified. He never bothers to drink the hot tea she leaves by the door.

-

Roy pays them a visit, once he is newly graduated from the State Military Academy. The eighteen-year-old alchemy student that Riza remembers is replaced by a serious soldier of twenty. She barely recognizes that it’s him standing on the doorstep of Hawkeye Manor, until he gives her a small smile and asks whether she’s become fluent in Drachman yet. 

It’s a little joke they had shared. She had opted to study Drachman for her foreign language proficiency when she was fourteen, rather than Cretan or Aerugan, which most of her classmates had chosen. Riza had spent hours sitting in the back grounds of the manor, muttering in Drachman to herself - utterly butchering the language - while Roy practiced more and more elaborate transmutations. 

He’s here to see her father, and Riza quells the tiny stirring of disappointment when Roy tells her that. Of _course_ he’s here to see Father. She shows him in and busies herself with making tea, wondering what her father will have to say to him. She hasn’t forgotten the fight they had when Roy had told him of his plans to enlist.

Riza is pouring the tea into cups when she hears Roy cry out for help, his voice hoarse with panic. She’s never heard him sound that way before, not even when he had hurt himself transmuting a chunk of metal shortly after beginning his apprenticeship, sending sharp scraps of metal flying everywhere, embedding in his skin. Riza sets the pot down at once, rushing out of the kitchen as fast as she can, toward the study. It’s a shameful thought, but her first stab of fear is for Roy. What if her father had lost his temper and-- 

The door to the study is closed. For once, she doesn’t knock. Riza flings it open, and stops dead.

She takes the sight before her at once, horrified, transfixed. Her father crumpled on the floor, blood spilling from the corners of his mouth, Roy bending over him, trying to lift him up. But it’s her that Father looks at. Only her. 

“I’m sorry, Riza,” he rasps. His voice is hoarse. Weak. Almost unrecognizable. “I should have done more for you.”

He closes his eyes, and doesn’t open them again. 

Roy lowers him to the floor, cradles his head in his lap. “Master?” He sets his hands against Father’s chest, applying pressure. “Master Hawkeye!”

He won’t reply. Riza knows he won’t. 

Her hands are pressed to her mouth. She can’t breathe. The room is spinning. 

Roy looks up at her and opens his mouth to speak, and Riza can see the apology forming on his lips. She turns and runs, blindly, her stocking-covered feet slipping against the wooden floor. She can’t be there. When Mother had slipped away, she had stayed by her side, curled up against her body, clinging to her, only leaving when the town undertaker had arrived to take her. Father had to carry her away from Mother as she screamed and wept and begged and pleaded, and as the undertaker had covered Mother with a white sheet--

Riza’s knees give out underneath her before she can make it to the kitchen table. She collapses to her knees on the hard floor of the hallway, sobbing like she hasn’t in more than ten years, shuddering so hard that she feels like she is being torn apart at the seams. 

_I’m sorry, Riza. I should have done more for you._

He had felt - at the end, he had felt-- 

Riza hears footsteps on the floor beside her. Black, shiny, military-issue shoes. Then Roy kneels at her side. She turns away from him, ashamed of how she had fled, ashamed that she can’t stop crying. 

“I’m sorry,” Riza chokes. The words are hardly understandable, even to her own ears. “I shouldn’t have--”

“You have nothing to apologize for.” Roy presses a handkerchief into her hands. After a moment of hesitation, he rests a hand on her shoulder.

The touch is gentle, reassuring. It triggers a fresh burst of tears, making her bend double, into herself. Riza’s chest aches from it. Her ribs feel like they could burst open. She had never imagined that she would weep like this (as hard as she’d cried for Mother) for the father she had no real relationship with. But she’s not crying for what he had been, the man and father he had been. She’s crying for what he could have been. For what they could have been. For what they never will be. 

There will be no reconciliation, now. Her father’s coldness toward her will never thaw. He will never hold her in his arms, stroke her hair, kiss her forehead, like other fathers do to their daughters. The only memories she has to carry of him are of long-ago alchemy lessons, and silent dinners at the kitchen table, and the way he wiped the blood from her back after he finished with his work every day. _Good girl, Riza._

“It could have been different,” Riza sobs. She wraps her arms around herself like she used to when she had been a little girl, hugging herself tight. She wants Mother. “Things could have been so different, if only…”

Roy squeezes her shoulder, and then pulls back. “I told you about my parents before, didn’t I?” he asks. “About the train accident they were in, and how I went to live with my aunt afterwards?”

Riza manages a jerky nod. She buries her face in the handkerchief he had given her. It smells faintly of his aftershave, a scent that she remembers from years ago, and the fabric is cool against her hot, swollen face. 

“I was four when it happened. Too young to really understand. When I was a few years older, I started talking to my aunt about it.” Roy tilts his head up to the ceiling, and Riza looks over at him, noticing that his eyes are rimmed with red. “I kept telling her, _if only_ they had taken an earlier train, or a later one. If only they had chosen not to take that trip at all. Everything would have been different.” He laughs, small and humorless. “She nipped that in the bud quickly. She told me that if I kept thinking like that, it would steal any chance of future happiness that I had. She said that thoughts like that were a sure way to drive a man mad. Or a woman.”

Riza stares at him, lost for words. “Nothing can change the past,” Roy says softly, meeting her gaze. There’s such compassion in his dark eyes. “All we can do is continue to move forward.” 

She realizes the merciless truth of what she’s saying. Riza takes a deep breath - through her mouth, as her nose is so congested she can’t breathe. She nods. Her head feels tight, like it’s been caught in a vice-like grip. She braces a hand against the wall, and pulls herself to her feet, standing unsteadily. “You’re right. Thank you. Excuse me, I should go and see to…”

Riza’s voice catches in her throat at the thought of seeing her father like that. Lying on the floor, limp and motionless, blood dripping down his chin, pooling on the ground beneath him. She’ll have to call the undertaker. He’ll arrive with his old automobile and his equipment, and cover Father with a white sheet, and that will be the last time she sees him, ever again.

“You should go sit down.” Roy steps in front of her, preventing her from turning back down the hallway toward the study. “I’ll take care of everything that needs to be done. I’ll call the undertaker.”

“The funeral arrangements--” Riza starts. She wraps her arms around herself again. The thin blazer she is wearing isn’t warm enough. She is so cold.

“I’ll handle all of that as well. Don’t worry about it.” Roy takes off his dark overcoat and hands it to her. Riza looks at it, numb, before remembering to reach out, her fingers closing around the heavy, fine material.

Roy strides down the hallway, his shoulders tense underneath the dark blue wool of his military uniform. Riza watches as he disappears into the study.

She pulls the coat on clumsily. It’s too large for her, but it’s warm. She manages to put one foot in front of the other until she gets to the kitchen table. Riza sinks down into the chair, and looks at the empty seats around the table. Mother had sat to her right, once, and Father directly across from her. When Roy had lived here, he had always taken the chair to her left.

Mother has been gone for eleven years. Father is gone, now. Roy will return to his military service when Father’s funeral is over. She’ll be alone here. Truly alone.

Riza puts her head in her hands.

* * *

_to be continued_

* * *


	2. two

Riza has no tears left to shed at the funeral. 

She listens to Roy talk about his dream of protecting the people of Amestris as a soldier. She remembers what Father had said to her, once.  _ Flame Alchemy will only cause tragedy if I place it in the wrong hands.  _

Riza exhales. She wonders what Father would have wanted.  _ Will you be the guardian of my research, Riza? Now and in all the years to come? _

She doesn’t know what Father would have wanted. Maybe she would have known if he had spoken to her, allowed her into his life, even a little bit. The gravestone in front of them reminds her that he is gone, now, and the decision is hers alone.

Father had spoken words of caution about  _ the wrong hands _ . Riza looks up at Roy, ready to embark on a path of serving and protecting the people of their country, and she can’t imagine any hands more right than his.

-

She asks Roy to come back to the manor after the funeral, so that she can show him Father’s research. Riza had left him waiting in the library, and then departed. He had probably assumed that she was fetching Father’s research journal from where it had been hidden in his study or her bedroom.

Riza goes to the bathroom instead. She removes her blazer, and the blouse she’s wearing under it. After a moment of hesitation, she takes off her bra, too. Her cheeks are burning, her fingers graceless, as she puts her dark blazer back on, buttoning it up completely. The silk lining feels cool and unfamiliar against her breasts. She feels much too exposed without her bra on, and she avoids looking at herself in the mirror. 

She has known Roy since she was twelve. He’s kind, and thoughtful, and good. He wouldn’t do anything improper. The thought of letting him, letting  _ any  _ man, see her in such a state is still frightening.

Riza returns to the library, her arms crossed over her chest, shoulders hunched. Roy turns away from the shelf of books he was inspecting, looking mildly surprised that she’s not carrying a research journal with her. She comes to stand in front of him, and takes a deep breath. “I understand that other alchemists keep their notes encoded in journals. My father chose not to do that.” 

“That makes sense.” Roy’s expression is contemplative. “I assume that he had concerns about others finding and decoding his notes. That’s not unheard of. You memorized his work, then?”

He sounds impressed. Riza swallows over her dry throat, and turns around. “No. I didn’t. But I carry it with me.”

She unbuttons her blazer and slips it off, her heart hammering. The air is cool on her skin, making the fine hair on her arms stand on end. Riza hastily draws the blazer to her chest, covering herself. Her palms are clammy with sweat.

She hears Roy’s quick inhalation of breath, hastily suppressed. “This is…” He steps closer, coming to stand right behind her. Instinct tells her to step away, but she suppresses the impulse, staying rooted to her spot. “The Flame Alchemy array?”

Riza bows her head in assent. 

“Incredible.” Roy’s voice is hushed, reverent. He reaches out, then, and brushes a finger against the lettering below the nape of her neck. Riza almost jumps out of her skin at the touch, and he steps back hastily. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”

Her heart is pounding like a frightened rabbit’s. “It’s all right.”

She glances back at him over her shoulder. Roy is studying her, and some of the awe in his demeanor has bled away. He’s starting to look troubled. “It’s an irregular way of encoding research. I’ve never heard of something like this being done before.”

Riza isn’t sure what to say. Roy is still looking at her, uncomfortably perceptive. He had lived with her and Father for two years, after all. He had known the humiliating truth of how little Father chose to associate with her.

“You--” he begins, and then he shakes his head, apparently abandoning that train of thought. “Thank you for trusting me with this. I’m sure Master Hawkeye told you the same, but you have to be very careful about…” He gestures awkwardly at her unclothed back. “Every alchemist in Amestris - in the world, even - would do anything to attain the knowledge that you hold the key to.”

The warning makes her uneasy. Riza tightens her grip on her blazer. She wishes she could put it back on. “I will.”

“I’m not sure how long it will take me to decode the array. It could be several hours.” Roy sounds genuinely apologetic. “Do you want to move somewhere more comfortable?”

Riza doesn’t even consider her bedroom, as that seems wildly inappropriate. She ends up settling facedown on the hard blue velvet sofa in the library, as Roy averts his eyes. He gives her his dark overcoat again to place underneath her, since it offers more coverage than her blazer. When she’s ready, he pulls up a chair next to her, his journal and a pen tucked under one arm. 

“I’ll burn the notes before I leave here,” Roy tells her, in response to her unasked question. 

It’s a strange experience. He leans over her back in study, and Riza can feel his breath, light and warm, on her skin. The proximity, the position she’s lying in - it reminds her of the long, agonizing hours when Father had tattooed her. Her muscles tense, preparing for pain that doesn’t come. Roy doesn’t touch her. He doesn’t hurt her. 

Roy occasionally whispers words from the array as he mulls them over and writes them into the pages of his journal, his pen scratching against the paper. They’re foreign and unfamiliar, nothing that makes sense to her. “Salve spiritus ignis,” he murmurs. “Doce mihi intellegere vis ignis.” Still, the sound of his voice, low and smooth and thoughtful, is oddly soothing. Riza feels it deep inside her, settling into her bones. She had never quite noticed how much she liked his voice before. 

Every hour or so, Roy shakes himself out of his deep spells of concentration to ask her if she needs to change positions, if she’s getting stiff or cold, if she would like a sandwich or a cup of tea. Riza gratefully accepts the offer of something to eat, and she realizes that she can’t remember the last time someone was so mindful of her comfort. Roy leaves, setting his journal aside. She sits up, pulling his coat on and buttoning it closed. It still smells like him, even though she’s been lying on it for so long. She can’t help but breathe in the faint, spicy scent.

He comes back shortly afterward, holding a cup of tea and a plate of toast spread with strawberry preserves. “I thought of bringing the radio up here from the kitchen, so that you could listen to something while I work, but I don’t think I’ll be able to concentrate with that background noise.” He sets the food and tea down in front of her. “I’m sorry. This must be very boring for you.” 

Riza shakes her head, taking a bite of her toast. “It’s fine. It’s so much better than…”

She trails off, embarrassed, and tries to cover the lapse by taking a sip of tea. 

-

They settle back down. Riza manages to hold a book in front of her without revealing too much, her elbows and arms carefully placed at her sides, her nose about an inch from the pages. It’s a detective novel, one of her favorites. Still, her attention wanders, halfway through each page. 

Instead of envisioning the main character and her partner tailing their primary suspect, Riza remembers Roy touching the nape of her neck, hours ago. She imagines him doing it again now, trailing his fingertips across the hundreds of impossibly tiny words lettered on her back. He would read them out loud to her, explaining the knowledge that Father had seen fit to impart onto her. Riza imagines him brushing the backs of his fingers up her spine, caressing his palms over her shoulder blades, down to the small of her back, like Father had done when he had rubbed the ointment into her back after each tattoo session. His fingers had been callused from all the writing he did, and the skin of his palms had been rough. She wonders what Roy’s hands would feel like.

Roy leans in close to her when he’s trying to get a better view of the words that surround the alchemical symbols. He does that more often now that it’s getting late, and the light coming in from the window is fading. He is close enough that his lips could brush her skin if he just leaned in another inch or two. 

Riza’s eyes drift shut, and she imagines light kisses pressed against her back and her shoulders, Roy’s hands on her waist. She would turn around, eventually, impatient, pulling him down on top of her, letting him settle with his arms on either side of her, caging her in, and his mouth on hers would be anything but  _ light.  _

Riza doesn’t move. She stays very still. Fights the urge to shift uncomfortably in her skirt, pinned as she is between Roy above her and the sofa beneath her. 

Despite these thoughts - these inappropriate, unseemly thoughts - she would never do anything provocative or flirtatious with him. Roy would never be interested in her in that way. He’s twenty and she’s sixteen and hasn’t even completed her schooling yet. It’s a good thing that he is so scrupulous, unlike some of the other young men in town that watch her while she walks home from the market. It’s a mortifying, crawling, uncomfortable realization, one that takes Riza back to being fourteen and watching Father prepare the needle and ink, that she would never be able to say no to anything that Roy wanted, either.

-

Roy insists on cooking dinner that night, but Riza refuses. She’s spent most of today lying still, and she’s filled with strange, restless energy that needs an outlet. She prepares a simple meal of pasta with roast peppers and eggplant in pesto sauce, while Roy reviews the notes he had taken from her back. They eat dinner together at the kitchen table, Roy reading from his notes, Riza with her chemistry textbook propped open in front of her, just like they had done when she had been twelve and he had been sixteen. 

“What are your plans, after this?”

Riza looks up, startled. “What?” 

“Sorry.” Roy runs a hand through his hair, a frequent gesture she remembers from their younger years. He gestures at the kitchen; at the empty house around them. “You’re finishing school soon, aren’t you? I wondered if you’ll stay. It’s a lot of space for one person on her own.”

“I’d like to pursue a postsecondary certification in Central or East City after I graduate in two months. I have nothing left here.” Riza looks around, feeling suddenly weary. She had been thinking about this earlier, while Roy had been studying the Flame Alchemy array. The only thing that had been bright and good about this place had been lost eleven years ago, when Mother had passed. “The manor is mortgaged. It’ll return to the bank.”

Roy regards her with some concern. Once again, Riza remembers belatedly that he had been quite intimately involved in her and Father’s lives. He had lived under their roof. He knew that they couldn’t afford heating or cooling, or an automobile. He knew that they could rarely afford chicken or venison. He must have noticed that Father’s clothing was worn and faded, and that Riza wore all of her clothes until they were slightly too short, and that the canvas shoulder bag she carried to school was falling apart at the seams. Most of Father’s money had been spent on alchemical books and supplies, with only the bare minimum set aside for other expenses. 

“I don’t want to pry.” Roy rubs the back of his neck, clearly uncomfortable. “But will you be alright?”

Riza blushes when she catches his meaning. “I’ll be fine. There should be enough money left in Father’s account to get me through the next two months, and provide a semester or so of tuition for a postsecondary certification.” 

But there’s rent and utilities for an apartment in East City or Central to think about as well. Not to mention any textbooks and other supplies she might need for her course. Riza tries to bridle the anxiety that rears up inside her like a snake. She can deal with those questions later. 

Mercifully, Roy doesn’t press the issue. “What certification are you planning to pursue?”

“Veterinary medicine or nursing.” Riza shrugs, feeling a little shy. Nobody has ever asked her about her future plans except her teacher, Miss Lily. She isn’t sure Father even realized she was in her final year of secondary school. “I haven’t decided yet.”

“They’re all respectable paths.” And expensive, as well. Miss Lily had tactfully told her as much. Roy leaves that unsaid. He clears his throat and looks at her thoughtfully. “Have you considered the State Military Academy?”

Riza is so taken aback that she swallows her bite of pasta too soon. “Never. With--”

She falters, and Roy nods his understanding. But Father is gone now. And while he had provided for her primary and secondary education, he hadn’t left much else behind for her. “The state subsidizes tuition, as well as room and board, at the military academy,” Roy explains. “It’s a decent option for people in - certain circumstances. Army pay is respectable, and there are plenty of support roles in the military that are well suited to women.” 

Father would hate the thought. He would probably fly into a terrifying rage if he heard Roy talking to her about this, but the thought of free tuition and living accommodations is tempting. And she’ll be able to do the same thing that Roy is planning to do. Help the people of Amestris, and her fellow soldiers alike. “That sounds promising,” she says. “Thank you.” 

Roy sets his fork aside, turning back to his journal. He writes down a few notes, and then tears the page free of the book, sliding it over to her. There are two names, followed by telephone numbers, noted in his neat, slanted handwriting. “The military academy line, as well as the phone number for my aunt in Central. In case you need any help. Just tell her your name, and that you’re Master Hawkeye’s daughter.” 

Riza takes the paper, tucking it into the inside pocket of her blazer. She smiles, but she feels the familiar sting of tears at the back of her eyes. “You’ve been so kind. It...” She struggles to find the words. “It means a great deal to me. Thank you so much.” 

“It’s nothing.” Roy glances down at his plate. “My aunt’s worked with a lot of girls like you,” he adds, after a few moments. “Girls who moved to Central with nothing, and with nobody to help them. It can be a dangerous position to be in. I would hate to see you in a situation like that.” 

He takes their empty plates and washes them in the sink, before heading to his old bedroom to review the notes he had taken during the day. Riza stays at the kitchen table with her chemistry textbook, trying to pay attention to the complicated problems in front of her. As hard as she tries to stay focused, her thoughts wander to her future, instead. 

-

It takes Roy all of three days to decipher her father’s research. It’s late on Sunday night, and Riza is working through her mathematics assignment, when Roy comes in through the back door. He’s been practicing out in the back grounds of the manor for ages. His face is flushed with exhilaration, and his eyes sparkle, and it’s easily the most beautiful thing that Riza has seen in a long time. It takes an effort for her not to stare. “Can I show you something?” he asks. “I don’t want to bother you if you’re busy, though.”

She tells him it’s fine, that she was close to taking a break anyway (a lie), and follows him to the back grounds of the manor. It’s cool outside, the sky brilliantly lit with stars and a perfect full moon. Roy stands in front of a transmutation circle he had etched in the dirt. “Stay close to me,” he says. “Just in case I lose control of the flames and they go flying off somewhere. I don’t want you to get hurt.” 

Riza joins him. She watches as Roy raises his hand, and snaps his fingers.

A jet of brilliant flame, flickering orange and red, erupts from his fingers. It rushes forward and then races in a wide circle around them, again and again. Even at a distance, it’s bright and hot enough to cast a glow over them. Riza gasps, amazed by how he controls the flame, keeping it at just the right distance, just the right intensity. “You did it!”

“I could do much, much more than this, I think.” Roy drops his hand, extinguishing the flame. He looks down at the circle beneath him, and then at his fingers, still a little awed. “But I don’t want to risk burning down your meadow. I’ll be able to practice more in Central, before I go in for my State Alchemist certification.”

He snaps again, sending a burst of flame safely into the sky, letting it flicker there, a sharp contrast against the inky black of the night sky. Riza watches it crackle, fascinated. Something in her constricts, and the joy and amazement from just a moment ago dulls into a bittersweet ache. So this is what Father had been consumed with. Obsessed with. This is what had been more important than her.

If she had been better - if she had been  _ good _ \- it would be her standing in Roy’s place right now, able to create flame with just a snap of her fingers. Father would have been so proud of her. 

Roy clears his throat, and Riza tears her gaze away from the fire. He looks at her in that quiet, empathetic way he has. It’s uncomfortable and irresistible at the same time - how he seems to  _ see  _ her, and how badly she wants to be seen, to be understood, by him. By anyone.

“Thank you,” he says. “This is an incredible gift. I’ll use it well.”

-

Roy leaves the next morning, with a reminder for her to call him or his aunt if she needs any assistance in the future. Riza closes the door behind him and rests her forehead against the splintering wood for a moment.

She goes to school. She goes to the bank, afterwards, to meet with her father’s account representative. 

She walks home. Her shoulders feel stiff and achy, and she curls her hands into fists, pressing her fingernails into her palms.

Riza sits down at the kitchen table and reviews the bank statements that the account representative had given her. She goes into her bedroom, opens the drawers on her bedside table, pulls out the informational sheets that she had sent for from postsecondary programs in Central and East City, describing the academic requirements and the cost of tuition.

She sits at the table for a long time, and forgets to make dinner for herself.

The next afternoon, after school, Riza calls the State Military Academy.

-

The minimum age for enrollment in the military academy is seventeen. Riza spends the next three months finishing secondary school and preparing Hawkeye Manor to return to the bank. It’s difficult, exhausting work. She sells the furniture and her father’s alchemical supplies. She donates the books in the library and her father’s study to the town’s school and its library. 

She donates almost all the clothing in the house as well. Her father’s. All of her childhood clothes. Mother’s, lying long-forgotten in the massive chest of drawers in Father’s bedroom. After so long, the clothes don’t smell like her anymore, like her sunflower-scented soap. They are still familiar. Riza hugs them close before she boxes them up, and cries a little.

Riza scrubs the floors on her hands and knees and dusts every surface and every baseboard. She washes every window. She tames the manor’s front and back grounds one last time, until the sun tans her skin and dirt gets under her fingernails. She spends the evening of her seventeenth birthday packing what few possessions she will carry with her into her canvas shoulder bag. 

She leaves at dawn and does not look back. She makes only one stop on the way to the town’s single railway platform - at the cemetery, at her mother’s grave. She kneels in the grass in front of Mother’s gravestone. The grass is cool and damp underneath her knees, early morning dew still glistening on the blades. 

Riza rests a handful of flowers that she had picked from the meadow on her mother’s grave. One last time.

-

Riza is one of seventy new recruits at the State Military Academy, and one of four girls. This semester’s class of incoming cadets ranges in age from seventeen (the minimum) to twenty-four.

She has never been around so many new people before. She had known all of her classmates from secondary school from the time they had been five years old and starting primary school together. Her town hadn’t attracted many newcomers. 

Riza sizes her fellow cadets up at the new cadet orientation, wary, watchful. They do the same to her, the other girls and the boys and young men alike, quiet judgment clear on their faces. She remembers what Roy had told her one night when she had asked him about what the military academy was like, in an attempt to glean more information about that possible path for her future.  _ It’s very competitive,  _ he’d said.  _ It’s a dog-eat-dog world there. Everyone’s fighting for the top spot. But don’t let me scare you off. I met someone there who became like a brother to me. And maybe it’s not as bad if you’re a woman. There weren’t any girls in my cadet class, so I wouldn’t know.  _

She has never been comfortable with others her age. Her fellow students in primary school had labeled her an  _ other.  _ Too quiet and shy. Too studious and eager to please the teacher with her impeccably prepared assignments and prompt answers to questions. Too plain, with her unusual hairstyle. By the time Riza had reached secondary school, she had given up even attempting to try to be friendly with her classmates. 

Riza glances around at her fellow cadets; their unfamiliar faces, their rigid, nervous posture. She has the feeling that the next two years will be more of the same. She doesn’t mind. She’s not here to make friends. She’s here to make something of herself.

-

The curriculum at the State Military Academy is rigorous and exacting. The academic classes include communications, surveillance, military history, defense and strategic studies, international affairs, counter-terrorism studies, and kinesiology. The topics are utterly foreign to Riza; a marked departure from her secondary school curriculum. She has a disadvantage, as one of the twenty cadets who doesn’t come from a military family with prior exposure to these areas of study.

Riza counteracts that disadvantage with a vengeance. She spends long hours in the library, poring over her books, taking pages upon pages of notes. Within three weeks, she’s answering the professors’ questions as fast as she used to back in school, and correctly, every time. 

She lives for the words of praise that the professors throw at her. Every single word of approval gives her a rush. It’s intoxicating. It’s addictive.  _ Well done, Cadet Hawkeye. That’s correct, Cadet. Good job, Hawkeye. That’s exactly right, Hawkeye. Sound analysis, Cadet.  _ Riza closes her eyes briefly every time, a jolt of satisfaction running hot through her. She did it. She succeeded again. 

(And some small part of her remembers the five-year-old who had sat in her father’s study. Failing at practical alchemy over and over again. Quailing at his harsh words.  _ Look at me now,  _ Riza would tell Father, if she could. She would ask him to  _ see  _ her, to notice her, for once. She’d indicate her professors - all of whom are men his age, experts in their fields of study. As intelligent as he had been, in their own ways. They all think she is clever and hardworking and good.  _ Good girl, Riza,  _ Father had told her. She  _ is  _ good, for more than agreeing to bear his research on her skin. She  _ is  _ good, even though she isn’t the alchemist he had wanted her to be.) 

Riza feels the resentful glances and envious looks that her fellow cadets aim at the back of her head. She hears their jealous mutters. Their opinions mean nothing to her. Their words aren’t the ones she cradles close at night, in the moments before she falls asleep.  _ Well done, Cadet Hawkeye. Good job, Cadet. (Good girl, Riza. You  _ are  _ a good girl.)  _

Combat training and physical readiness training are more of a challenge. They are even more unfamiliar to Riza than the academic curriculum had been. The cadets go through hand-to-hand combat classes, both one-on-one and against multiple targets. The physical readiness training involves large amounts of running, both with and without heavy sandbags strapped to their backs. They do endless push-up and pull-up drills. They navigate obstacle courses that grow lengthier and more extreme and difficult by the day. They rappel from towers, and climb rock faces, and claw their way out of ditches. 

It’s a grueling regimen. Riza has never done anything more physically demanding than carrying groceries from the market and doing housework and yard work before. Her muscles and joints scream under the strain, under the extreme demands she places on them. Her heart hammers in her chest and sometimes she can’t catch her breath. 

She can’t break the top ten in her cadet class. She’s one of the anonymous, mediocre masses, effectively unseen by their drill sergeant, except when he’s shouting at her to  _ do better, Cadet, try harder, for God’s sake.  _ It makes Riza’s hands clench into fists, makes her feel as useless and hapless as she was as a five-year-old alchemy student. Day after day, two out of the four girls in her class do better than her - both of them tall, lean, muscular young women from northern Amestris, the daughters of soldiers stationed at Fort Briggs. 

So Riza pushes herself. She practices out on the training grounds during her limited free hours in the evening. She runs lap after lap on the track, training exclusively with a sandbag strapped to her back, so that she’ll be faster without it. She finds the heavy iron dumbbells in the gym and watches the young men training there out of the corner of her eye, mimicking their movements. Bicep curls, overhead press, bench press, rows. She does push-ups until she collapses facedown on the floor, her arms trembling. 

Slowly, steadily, Riza starts to get better. She works her way into the top twenty of her cadet class. The top fifteen. And finally, the top ten. She beats out Inger and Rilla on mile times, obstacle course times, and total push-ups, on the last day of September. 

“Your stats have improved substantially since the beginning of the quarter, Hawkeye,” Master Sergeant Abelman tells her. “Fine work.”

Riza almost weeps. 

She walks around for the rest of the day feeling like she is walking on air and sunshine. When she looks in the mirror after getting out of the shower, a towel wrapped around her and another one draped over her shoulders and back to hide her tattoo, she is practically glowing. 

But it’s marksmanship that is the highlight of her days. It’s marksmanship that makes every fiber of her quiver with joy and pride and satisfaction. She hadn’t expected this. She had never shot a gun, never even  _ touched  _ one before enlisting. Whatever natural aptitude Riza had lacked for alchemy, she finds in marksmanship. Her shots hit the target dead center, every single time, at various ranges. Still targets. Moving targets. Multiple targets, static and in motion. She’s as good with a pistol as she is with a sniper rifle and a machine gun and an assault rifle. 

Master Sergeant Bresler calls her the best cadet in her year. “Keep honing these skills, Hawkeye, and you’ll be the finest sniper in Amestris by the time you graduate,” he says, before walking further down the line, to check on Inger and Rilla. 

It is the best thing anyone has ever said to her. Riza tries not to blush, and she can’t get the words out of her mind. 

“God, the way Bresler talks, it’s like he wants to marry her,” Chapman murmurs quietly, scornfully, to Dobrow, once Bresler is out of earshot. 

Dobrow looks at her and smirks. “Her?”

Riza lifts her rifle, takes aim, and shoots her target straight through the head.

-

Most nights, Riza leaves dinner early and heads to the range for extra practice. The weight of her weapon in her hands, the gunshots muffled by her protective ear coverings, the subtle kickback of the rifle, the sharp, acrid scent of gunpowder - these things ease the perpetual ache and hunger and loneliness inside her as much as praise does. There’s a voice in her head, a little girl’s voice, that cries,  _ unloved, unworthy, unloved, unworthy,  _ always. It’s only silenced with the  _ crack  _ of a gunshot, and the memory of kind words. 

Riza lowers her rifle to reload, and it’s only then that she notices she isn’t alone. Another cadet has joined her at the range, a girl with long, curly dark hair tied up in a ponytail. Rebecca Catalina. Her father is a Major at Southern Command, and her two older brothers are in the military as well. 

She isn’t shooting. She’s just leaning against the wall a few spaces down from Riza, observing her with frank curiosity. Catalina is one of the few cadets who doesn’t make envious or snide comments about her in class or at the range. She keeps to herself, sits alone at her own table in the mess hall, absorbed in fashion magazines or romance novels, and she performs well in her own right. She is always top five in marksmanship, and ranging from top fifteen to top twenty in physical readiness and combat training. She is consistently top three in academics, despite the fact that Riza has never seen her even set foot in the library.

Riza removes her ear coverings a little warily. “Can I help you?”

“You can go on. Sorry if I distracted you.” Catalina shifts from foot to foot, slightly abashed. “I just wanted to watch your form and see what I could do to improve my marksmanship. I never end up next to you in class.”

She seems genuine. Riza struggles to find a response. She’s used to praise from her teachers, but it’s so rare that any of her classmates has ever had a kind word for her. “You’re solid, Catalina,” she manages. “You ranked fourth today.” 

“That’s not good enough.” Catalina scowls. “I need to knock Chapman from the number two spot. He’s  _ such _ an ass.”

It’s such a blunt and honest assessment of their fellow cadet that Riza laughs. It’s a tiny sound, discordant and rusty from disuse. She freezes, surprised, her hand nearly flying to her mouth to cover the sound, press it back in. 

She almost can’t remember the last time she had laughed. But then she does. It comes back in a moment, in a memory so visceral and intense it nearly drives the breath from her body. It had been a story Mother had told her, about a couple of dogs and the adventure in town that they went on when their owners had gone away for vacation. The dogs had gotten up to mischief, and Mother had used her stuffed dog Maisie as a prop, making Maisie run and leap and frolic over Riza’s bedspread, and Riza had laughed so hard that her ribs had ached.

“Hey, don’t feel bad,” Catalina says. Riza looks up, jolted to the present again. “It’s true.”

Riza lowers her hand from her mouth and ignores the burning in her eyes. She hears Mother’s voice whispering to her, gentle and supportive.  _ Go on, sweetheart. It’ll be nice for you to have a friend. _

She smiles, tentatively. Catalina smiles back.

-

Riza spends an hour teaching Catalina how to refine her shooting positions - prone, kneeling, sitting, and standing. They shoot together for an hour after that, and return to the main academy grounds at half past nine at night. Rebecca takes her to the mess hall, which is locked after hours, and picks the lock with extraordinary skill and zero remorse. They find a couple of leftover pudding cups in the kitchen, and they sit at a table together, talking over their chocolate pudding until the clock strikes eleven and they’ll both be utterly useless at their counter-terrorism seminar early tomorrow morning. 

In the end, it is as simple as that, and Rebecca Catalina becomes Riza’s first friend. 

(Second, if Roy counts, but Riza isn’t sure that he does.) 

-

There are hard things and easy things about friendship. 

It feels so good to have someone to sit next to in class, and someone to talk about class with afterwards. It feels good to have someone to pair up with for hand-to-hand combat training, someone to push you and offer a quiet word of encouragement - or a cheerful shout of encouragement - when you run laps and struggle through an obstacle course and when your arms are close to giving out on your forty-first push-up. 

It feels good to have someone to study alongside in the library, and somebody to sit with and talk to at every meal. Riza sits across from Rebecca and allows Rebecca to give her the quizzes from her magazines, and tells Rebecca about the best thriller and mystery novels she’s ever read. While she does so, Riza remembers countless meals eaten alone at the kitchen table of Hawkeye Manor. Every night over dinner, she is so glad, relieved to the point of breathlessness, that those days are behind her. She isn’t religious, not really, but sometimes she looks back and thinks, with an intensity that scares her,  _ Thank God that’s over. _

It is easy to talk to Rebecca, most of the time. It gets harder when Rebecca asks her about anything personal. Her parents. ( _ They’ve both passed. My mother when I was young, my father more recently. _ ) Her childhood.  _ (Uneventful, in an obscure town out in eastern Amestris.)  _ Her old school friends. ( _ I wasn’t that close to any of my classmates. We haven’t stayed in touch. _ ) If she’s had any boyfriends before ( _ No. I couldn’t -- no _ .) 

When Riza had accidentally let slip that she had cooked dinner every night for almost ten years, and done all the work around the house and on the manor grounds, too, the look on Rebecca’s face - shocked, then pitying, then carefully neutral - had made her feel about an inch tall. 

Rebecca hasn’t seen her back.

Sometimes she listens to Rebecca’s stories of growing up, with her two older brothers who adored her, with her parents, who adored all three of them and each other - in a house full of love and laughter - and Riza feels almost nauseous with envy. It’s unbecoming and it makes her feel like a poor excuse for a friend. Rebecca is a kind young woman who deserves the happy childhood she had. 

_ But didn’t I deserve that, too?  _ the little girl’s voice inside her asks.  _ Why didn’t I get to have what Rebecca did?  _ Why couldn’t her mother have lived past twenty-six, and written her daughter long letters every week, full of questions about the academy and gossip from home? Why couldn’t her father have taught her how to drive, and how to shoot, and helped her with her mathematics assignments every night? 

Riza stifles the envy inside her, rips it away like she had ripped the weeds from their roots in the grounds of Hawkeye Manor. 

The good times outweigh the difficult ones, by far. 

Rebecca lends Riza her cosmetics, and teaches her how to apply them. ( _ No, you can’t use your fingertips to put them on,  _ Rebecca informs her, scandalized, brandishing her collection of brushes.  _ That’s what these are for. _ ) They find out that despite their different hair colors, the same shade of subtle pink lipstick suits them both well. They find out, to Rebecca’s delight, that the steady hands that make Riza so excellent at the range also make her an expert at applying eyeliner. 

They had left the academy grounds tonight, to see a free theater performance at Evergreen Park. Rilla and Inger are still out, and they have the female cadets’ dorm room to themselves. Riza sinks down on her lower level bunk bed, breathing a tired sigh. Rebecca flings herself onto the stool in front of the mirror and yanks her hair free from her ponytail. “Ugh.” She makes a face in the mirror, tugging her hairbrush through her curls. “I should cut my hair short like yours. It’s so hard to deal with.”

“It would suit you, like everything does.” Riza rises, and joins her friend by the mirror. It’s uncharacteristic, impulsive, but she holds her hand out for the brush. “Here. I can help.”

Rebecca gratefully relinquishes the brush. Riza takes it and brushes her hair out, careful and patient with the tangles, just as Mother had been with her hair, once. It feels nice to do something for someone else like this, something that makes them happy and pleases them. She had loved to brush Mother’s long hair. Rebecca’s hair, curly and dark as it is, couldn’t be more different than Mother’s straight, blonde locks, but the tenderness of the gesture is the same. 

There is a faraway expression on Rebecca’s face. “My mom used to do this for me. She’d come into my room, and put on a radio drama, and she’d brush my hair and I’d brush hers.” 

“Mine, too.” Riza eases the brush through Rebecca’s hair one last time, and then taps her on the shoulder with the brush, handing it back. “There. You just have to be more gentle with it.” 

Rebecca looks up at her, taking the brush. “You’re sweet, Riza,” she says. “Not that anybody who sees you smoking targets at the range would ever believe that, of course.”

Riza smiles at the compliment. “Don’t tell anybody.” 

“It’ll be our secret.”

-

Cadets decide their career track toward the end of their first semester at the academy. It’s all anyone can talk about through the entire month of November and December, as they meet with their advisors and make their decision under their advisors’ guidance, and with their approval.

Master Sergeant Bresler, the marksmanship instructor, is Riza’s advisor. They always meet at the range, instead of his small office on the main campus of the academy. Riza has spent more time here than anywhere else on the academy grounds. In a matter of a few short months, the range had become as familiar to her as Hawkeye Manor had been, and much more comfortable and beloved. She feels more at home here, amongst the vast collection of firearms, than she has anywhere else in the world.

Bresler has shown her how to disassemble, clean, and reassemble every gun in the armory, from the positively ancient eighteen-hundreds era rifles to the gleaming, brand-new ones that are fresh off the assembly line. They work through the collection together every few days, working in comfortable silence sometimes, talking a little bit on other days. He’s in his late thirties, with sandy blonde hair, a pronounced limp, and a terrible, jagged scar across the right side of his face. The cadets whisper about where he got the battle wounds, but nobody has dared to ask. 

Bresler had mentioned to her, once, that he had received both injuries in the Aerugo border conflict of 1900. She’d never repeated it to anybody. It’s stupid, but Riza thinks of her back, the tattoo marring her skin just as the scar mars Bresler’s face, and she feels a strange kinship with him.

“What do you have in mind for your career track, Hawkeye?” he asks her now, deftly reassembling the Barrett M80 he had just finished cleaning. 

“I’m not sure, sir,” Riza admits. She removes the magazine from her rifle. “My - friend, who suggested that I consider enlisting - he mentioned that the army had a fair amount of suitable support roles for women.”

Bresler’s expression is unreadable. “It does.”

“I could opt for administration and support.” It’s what Rebecca had just confirmed with her advisor, Master Sergeant Abelman, yesterday. She had left the meeting in high spirits. 

“Your academic ranking would support that path. You’d get snapped up quickly,” Bresler observes. “You’ll end up serving on the staff for some Colonel or General at Central Command or East City Command, most likely. You’d never see the front lines in Ishval, or on the other borders.” 

The faint judgment in his tone sends apprehension fluttering through her. “Yes, sir.”

“It’s a respectable choice, for a woman. You could rise to the rank of Captain, maybe even Major, depending on how progressive your commanding officer is.” Bresler removes the bolt from his Bergara B-14 Ridge. His movements are quick and clinical. Riza has the feeling he could do all of this blindfolded. “It’s also a complete waste of your talent.” 

The words hit her like a slap. Riza’s fingers fumble, and she knocks her bottle of solvent over, before hastily righting it. “I--” she starts. She’s not sure what to say. 

Bresler looks at her, and his gaze pins her to her spot. She freezes like a target in the crosshairs. “I meant what I said when you enlisted, Hawkeye. You could be the finest sniper in Amestris, with the proper training. To hear that you’d rather pursue an office job - it’s like a bird choosing to have her own wings clipped. If you’ll pardon the pun.” 

Her face feels hot, and she stammers. “I’m sorry, sir.”

Bresler sets the Ridge down. He makes his way over to her. Riza focuses on cleaning her rifle, too embarrassed to look him in the eye.

“Look at me, Hawkeye,” he orders.

Riza does, fighting the urge to flinch. It’s ridiculous and terrifying, but for an instant, she expects to see her father’s face staring back at her. Another man who had expected something great from her, and been disappointed. (She doesn’t want to disappoint  _ anyone.  _ She wants to please. She wants to be good.) 

Bresler studies her. “I saw a hunger in you, from your very first day here,” he says, after a long pause. “And I still do. You’ll make a good assistant to a member of senior military staff, sure. But you could be  _ great.  _ You could be the best of the best, the finest in your field. Don’t you want that?”

The words linger, tempting her in a way that almost nothing else has before. She, Riza Hawkeye, the girl who hadn’t been able to complete a simple transmutation of water to ice, could be  _ great.  _ She does want that. (And she doesn’t want to disappoint her mentor. She doesn’t want him to grow cold and dismissive toward her, to discard her, to seek and find a replacement, someone who could live up to his expectations, someone who could make him proud, like--)

“Yes,” Riza whispers. “I do.” 

“What’s holding you back?” Bresler crosses his arms over his chest and leans against the table. “Are you nervous about taking lives in combat?”

There’s no judgment in his voice, this time, just genuine curiosity. Riza allows herself to nod.

“I thought as much.” He sighs. “Just think of it this way. You’re not killing for the sake of it. You’re doing it to protect your fellow soldiers. Does that make sense?”

There’s only one correct answer to his question. But then, out of nowhere, Riza remembers Roy. She’ll be protecting soldiers like him on the front lines. Her reply, when it comes, is genuine. “Yes, sir.”

“You’ll do it, then,” Bresler presses. It isn’t quite a question. 

Riza nods again. “Yes, sir.” 

“Good.” Bresler un-crosses his arms and returns to the rifle he had set down. He keeps his eyes on the disassembled weapon as he speaks. “I’m proud of you, Hawkeye. You’re making the right choice.”

Riza reaches for her bottle of solvent and soft cloth again, and she feels the warmth on her cheeks.  _ I’m proud of you.  _ She’s never heard words so sweet. It’s inappropriate, but she thinks, fleetingly, that she’d do anything to hear him say that again. “Thank you, sir.” 

-

She tells Rebecca about her choice later that night, as they sit together in the library - Riza with her kinesiology textbook, Rebecca with the latest issue of  _ Amestrian Woman.  _

“I’m entering the sniper program,” Riza mumbles, highlighting a passage on the correct method of applying a tourniquet. 

Rebecca sets her magazine down. “What?”

Riza nearly flinches at the surprise and disappointment in her friend’s voice. “I’m--”

“I heard you the first time. I’m just confused.” Rebecca pauses. Riza dares glancing up, and immediately looks back down at her book. “We were both going to do admin and support together. Maybe end up at the same command center, if not on the same General’s staff.” 

“I know.” Riza folds her arms over her textbook. “But I talked to Bresler, and he thought that I’d do best as a sniper.”

“You’ll end up on the front lines.” Rebecca shifts in her seat, visibly discomfited. “They’ll probably send you to Ishval at the end of next semester. They did that to my brother.” 

“I know,” Riza repeats, even though something inside her clenches with anxiety at the thought. They’ve all heard about what is happening in Ishval. The cadets listen to the war reports on the radio almost every morning over breakfast in the mess hall. 

“Why?” Rebecca asks, finally. “It’s not a typical choice for women in the service.” 

“I’ll… I’ll be able to protect people.”

“Ah.” Rebecca interlaces her fingers together, and rests her chin on top of them. “People. Like your mysterious soldier boy.”

Riza ignores that. There’s a lump in her throat, and it’s a struggle to speak around it. “I could be good at it.  _ Really  _ good at it.” (She’s heard the stories of the Flame Alchemist in the daily war reports. He is admired, decorated, incredible. If things had been different, it would have been her, standing in his place.) 

“And--” She hadn’t planned on saying this. It just falls out. “I couldn’t say no, Rebecca. He’s my mentor. I’m his best student. I didn’t want to disappoint him. I just couldn’t.” 

Riza looks down at her textbook again, so she won’t have to see the way Rebecca is looking at her. 

“Riza.” Her friend’s voice is soft. Hesitant. “You know...you can always talk to me, right? About things?”

Riza inclines her head wordlessly. 

The silence stretches between them. Finally, Riza pushes her textbook toward Rebecca. “Here. Can you quiz me on the steps for applying a tourniquet?”

Rebecca takes the book, after a moment, and begins to read. 

* * *

_ to be continued _

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everybody who left your comments and kudos on the previous chapter - it always makes my day to see them. 
> 
> Riza is getting older (seventeen, in this chapter) and we're starting to see some of the issues that her father's neglect and abuse have left her with. 
> 
> It's a delicate issue (no pun intended) that I hope I am handling with respect and empathy. I hope that you enjoyed reading, and I would love to hear what you thought. Additionally, I'm on tumblr @lantur if anyone else is on tumblr and would like to connect. :)


	3. three

Riza spends six months in sniper training before she receives her deployment order to Ishval. 

She’s the only cadet in the program who had been identified as skilled enough to see the front lines - recognition that had left her feeling as though she was inhabiting a daydream for the rest of the day. _You’re worthy, Riza,_ she tells herself, as she looks in the mirror after her shower. _You_ are _good, Riza._

She has all of a week to prepare for the deployment. The time passes in a blur, as does the long journey, by train and then by military convoy, from Central City to the Amestrian army outpost in the Daliha region of Ishval. Forty-four other soldiers travel with her, men shipping to Ishval from the Western and Southern Command Centers. She sits slightly apart from them, her rifle on her lap, her pack nestled between her feet. The men give her curious looks, but they don’t speak to her. 

The rifle, a brand-new McMillan TAC-50, had been a gift from Bresler. _It’s the best of the best,_ he’d told her, as he pressed it into her hands. _They’ll provide you with a standard-issue sniper rifle, of course, a Sako. The military has a contract with them - they’re affordable enough that the army can provide them in mass to their snipers. The McMillans are expensive, but they’re much lighter than the Sako._ He tapped her upper arm once. _Which will be helpful, when you’re holding it in position for hours. I know how hard you train, but the fact is that you just don’t carry as much muscle or strength in your arms as a man._

Riza had stammered her thanks. The two of them practiced with the rifle together - it handled like a _dream._ Then she took it back to the girls’ dorm and laid it out on her bed, admiring its length and sleek, lightweight design. 

It had only been later that night, trying to get to sleep, that Riza realized it was the first gift anyone had given her since her mother passed away.

-

They arrive in Ishval to scorching heat, and air rife with the sounds of gunfire and explosions. The scent of smoke is heavy in the air. 

Riza goes through her orientation with everyone else who had shipped in with her. She hasn’t taken in this much new information at once since her first day at the academy, and she listens to it all wide-eyed, trailing after Master Sergeant Roberts. He shows them where they can find the mess hall and the medical tents and the different command centers. He shows them where to find weapons and ammo. He shows them where the shower facilities and the outhouses are, and points out the different areas where they’re allowed to set up their tents and cots to sleep. He explains that most people camp with their own speciality; infantry with infantry, communications with communications, snipers with snipers. (State Alchemists with State Alchemists. Riza thinks, fleetingly, of Roy.) He gives them white cloaks designed to shield their skin from the sun. 

Riza commits every one of Roberts’ words to memory, before he releases them to report for duty at their own command centers. 

She pauses outside of the sniper command center before entering. Almost a year of military training has helped her become more sure of herself, more confident, more brave. But right now, standing outside of the sniper command center, on the verge of meeting her first real commanding officer, Riza doesn’t feel like the nearly-eighteen-year-old top cadet that she is. She feels like the nervous child that she had once been, sitting in Father’s study, desperate to answer his questions correctly, desperate to do well. Her palms damp with trepidation, anxiety making her stomach ache. 

She wants to make a good impression on him. (Her father. Her new commanding officer, Major Hall. Her instructor and advisor, Bresler.) She wants to do well. She wants to make him proud of her. (She’s not sure which _him_ she’s referring to.) 

Riza takes a deep breath, steadies herself, and steps into the command center. 

-

Riza enters the field the next day. Major Hall pairs her with Lieutenant James Reid, a sniper nine years her senior, who has spent the past three years on the front lines in Ishval. They take their places on the roof of an abandoned warehouse as the sun rises. Reid adjusts the small radio that will allow them to communicate with Major Hall and any of the other commanding officers back at the outpost. Riza loads her rifle and checks the scope, assuming her position near the edge of the roof. 

She had barely been able to eat her rations this morning. She stays calm and focused mentally, remembering her training from the academy, but her body reveals the truth. Her chest is tight with nerves. Her hands are steady, but her heart rate is faster than it should be. Riza exhales slowly, willing herself to calm down.

“This is your first time in the field, isn’t it?” Reid asks, suddenly. 

Riza throws him a brief glance. He is settled about ten feet away from her, and seems completely at ease. “It is, sir.”

“Try to hold it together when you make your first kill.”

His tone is completely matter-of-fact, without a hint of condescension. He’s one of several that have warned her about this. Bresler, Rebecca, Major Hall, a few of the other snipers that she had talked with yesterday. All of them had eaten dinner together at the mess hall the previous night. Despite the fact that she is younger than them, and the only woman, the other snipers had been kind, asking her about the military academy and her experience in the sniper program. Most of them had studied under Bresler’s predecessor. 

“Yes, sir.” 

For the first time, a wave of impatience washes over Riza at the warning. She had watched her mother die of influenza. She had witnessed her father’s obsession with Flame Alchemy, and she had watched him die before her eyes, too. She has seen terrible things. She has been no stranger to loss or death, even before she enlisted - and now she is a soldier, trained by the best of the best. She can handle this. 

Reid takes their first few targets, eliminating half of the rebel group that is approaching the Third Platoon. Riza spots their next targets first. “Eyes on four, five, and six,” she announces, tracking them as they emerge from behind the shelter of a burned-out shop front. 

“Take the shots, Cadet.”

One second to take aim, and nine milliseconds to fire three times in quick succession.

Through the scope of her rifle, Riza sees the bullet tear through the first man’s skull, then the second, then the third. She sees the shattering of bone, and the blood and brain matter spattering on the wall behind them. She watches them collapse, dead before they hit the ground.

There’s something stuck in her throat, something between a gasp and a cry of shock. Riza holds it back. She doesn’t make a single sound. 

“Well done, Hawkeye.” Reid sounds approving. How does that approval make what she had done almost worth it? How does that make her want to do it _again_ , to hear more words of affirmation? That, more than anything else, makes the nausea surge up inside her. 

Riza forces herself to nod. She sees movement down the street from where her targets had fallen. She takes aim.

-

Riza bears it. She puts on the bravest face she can. She tries to be stoic, as her teachers at the academy told her that soldiers must be in combat. It isn’t for her to pass internal or external judgment on the orders she’s given. (So many of their targets are influential Ishvalan elders, stooped with age, their hair gleaming white, and this is _not_ what she had imagined when she had been a student learning about enemies of the state.) 

As a soldier, her duty is to obey, to carry out her orders to the best of her ability, and she does. 

Major Hall pats her on the shoulder and tells her that she is a credit to her entire cadet class. An example that all women enlisting in the army should seek to follow. Riza bows her head in silent acknowledgement and gratitude. _Me,_ she thinks. _An example._

The rest of her sniper team is gentle with her, evidently seeing through her efforts at bravery and stoicism, but Riza can’t bring herself to mind it any longer. Reid, who is paired up with her every day, distracts her with conversation as they make their way to and from their shifts, relieved by Lucas and Marshall. Philips ribs her about how she should eat more. Brody and Patrickson lend her a couple of their paperback novels. Anders tells her stories from his sister, the head veterinarian at Central City’s zoo. They get her through. So do Rebecca’s letters, which arrive like clockwork on every second Thursday, filled with inquiries about her well-being and news and gossip about Rebecca’s new internship at Central Command. 

This is the first time Riza has been a part of a team. This is the first time she’s ever been accepted by a group of her peers. It feels special. Despite the circumstances, she likes it. 

Executive Order 3066 changes everything.

They’re all sitting by the fire one night, talking about plans for after they return home from the front, when Major Hall approaches them. His normally olive-toned skin is sallow, his hands clenched into fists. Riza tenses up. She knows, on a deep, instinctive level, that something has gone terribly wrong. 

She’s almost on her feet at the same time as her team, ready to take orders, to spring into action. Hall waves a hand. “At ease.” 

His voice is hoarse. He sinks to one knee in front of the fire, and waits for them to join him. The light of the flames casts shadows on his face. He swallows, and he doesn’t speak.

Riza sees her own apprehension echoed in the rest of the team. Reid, seated beside her, gives her a quick, reassuring look.

“Our orders have changed.” Hall doesn’t look at them. He keeps staring into the fire. “The Fuhrer signed off on Executive Order 3066 a couple of hours ago. I won’t be giving you lists of targets anymore.”

“What?” Brody frowns. “Then how will we…?”

“Our orders are to begin an extermination campaign, along with the infantry and the State Alchemists.” Hall’s words are halting. Riza blinks, wondering if she had heard him correctly. “We target every Ishvalan we see. Civilian as well as combatant.”

“ _Everyone_ ?” The question escapes her before she can think better of it. Riza almost doesn’t recognize her own voice, high-pitched and uncertain. She’s voiced what the rest of the team is thinking. _Everyone_. Civilians. Meaning - women and children, too? 

“Everyone.” Hall’s tone is brusque, clipped, like he can’t wait to get the word out of his mouth. Like he can’t stand the taste of it.

The team stares at him. 

Marshall laughs, short and nervous. “You’re not serious, sir.”

“Does this look like a _fucking_ joke to you, Lieutenant?” Hall demands, and Hall _never_ speaks to them with that edge in his voice, and it’s only then, Riza sees, that it really sinks in. 

One by one, the snipers’ faces go ashen. One by one, they pull themselves to their feet and stride off, muttering to themselves, cursing to themselves. 

Riza stays where she is, frozen, horror and disbelief sinking their teeth into her. Reid remains beside her, his long fingers wrapped around the barrel of his rifle in a white-knuckled grip. He’s sitting as still as a statue. 

Major Hall looks at them. “Go and get some rest, you two,” he orders. “You’re going to need it.” 

-

The first Ishvalans that Riza sees through the scope of her rifle the next morning, as dawn is breaking, are a young couple about her age. They are trying to sneak out of their encampment, hand in hand, undoubtedly with the goal of fleeing into the desert. 

Her throat tightens. Her hand cramps. “I can’t,” Riza says. The words sound small and weak, the domain of Riza the child who couldn’t perform basic alchemical transmutations, not Riza the cadet who is an example that all women enlisting in the army should seek to follow. “I can’t.”

Reid looks at her. “You have to.”

He sounds weary. Undoubtedly, he hadn’t slept much last night. Like her. Like the rest of them.

Riza shakes her head. “I can’t,” she repeats, even though it makes her the useless, powerless little girl she had been. 

“Damn it, Hawkeye!” Reid shouts. Riza flinches, cringing back, remembering how Father had sworn at her, how he had pushed away from the desk and strode off, leaving her alone in his study, before she had dissolved into tears--

Reid notices her reaction, and Riza sees the remorse in his eyes. He sets his rifle down and takes a deep breath, raking a hand through his dark hair. “Look.” His voice breaks. “I know. I know it’s… But you have to. Don’t make me have to take you in for insubordination.” 

She can’t say _no._ Reid is a friend, but he’s also a First Lieutenant and higher ranked than her, a mere cadet who hasn’t even graduated from the academy yet. She doesn’t want him to report her to Major Hall. She doesn’t want to lose her reputation and be sent back to the academy in disgrace, probably even expelled and court-martialed for insubordination.

She’ll be back where she started, then. (Useless, a disappointment, unworthy.) She can’t go back to that. Not now that she’s finally started to make something of herself. 

Riza takes aim. She swallows the bile rising in her throat. Then she fires. 

-

It’s an intrusive thought, one that surfaces at the strangest times. While Riza is eating dinner. While she’s in the shower, scrubbing herself down with the tiny, harsh bar of soap. While she’s brushing her teeth. _I’m a killer,_ she thinks, as she looks at herself in the enamel hand mirror that Rebecca had given her on the night before her deployment. (Her face and hands have grown tan from the sun. There are pronounced dark circles underneath her eyes. She’s lost the weight that she had gained during her time at the academy.) 

That thought comes to the forefront of her mind in the time that it takes her to fall asleep. Riza closes her eyes and sees the Ishvalans’ faces (old and lined, young and smooth, everything in between) in the minutes and moments before she pulls the trigger. And the contrast between their expressions before, and in the moment after. She sees the agony, the panic, the horror on their faces, the realization, as they start to fall. She sees the second that the light leaves their eyes. 

She sees the spurts of blood. She’s intimately familiar with the color of brain matter and spinal fluid now. 

And Riza sees the flames. Every day, she sees the flames, as they consume people, refugee encampments, buildings. It makes her want to start screaming and never stop. It is an agony as terrible, or even more, than her own bloody work.

 _Flame Alchemy will only cause tragedy if I place it in the wrong hands,_ Father had told her. _Will you be the guardian of my research, Riza? Now and in all the years to come?_

She had entrusted the knowledge of Flame Alchemy to Roy. She had let Father down, one last time; betrayed him in the most terrible way. His spectacular creation, his life’s work and legacy, used as a weapon of mass destruction. And it is all her fault. She couldn’t learn alchemy. She couldn’t follow in Father’s footsteps. Father had only given her _one_ thing to do, and she couldn’t even do that right for him. She has failed him so completely, in every single way. 

Riza cries every night, curled under her thin blanket. Remembering the faces of her victims, and thinking of what Father would say to her if he could see the consequences of the mistake she had made. The years of neglect that she had gone through at his hands - honestly, she had deserved a hundred times worse.

-

The specter of her father seems to loom just around every corner, staring at her through haunted, accusing eyes, face twisted with rage and heartbreak. It nearly shatters her. 

Along with everything else that’s happening. 

Two of the sniper team, Lucas and Marshall, desert the army, disappearing into the night. Search patrols are sent out, to retrieve them or to retrieve their corpses, but neither of them are found. 

Patrickson returns from his shift one Monday and shoots himself in the head in front of the command tent. Brody does the same, a week later. 

Major Hall’s eyes are red and swollen, always. He looks at the surviving team like he doesn’t see them.

Riza sits in her tent at night, staring at the rifle Bresler had given her, the gift she had treasured. The only reason she doesn’t follow in Patrickson and Brody’s footsteps is because she can’t bear to face Father again.

-

One morning, Riza is on the roof of the old hospital, when she sees a young mother and her little girl. They’re close enough that she doesn’t even need her scope to get a clear line of sight on them. The mother is carrying the girl, fleeing their encampment in advance of the infantry platoon and the State Alchemists marching their way. The woman’s eyes are wide and terrified. The girl weeps, clinging to her mother, hiding her face in her shawl. 

The two of them are just below the hospital. Reid would have seen them too. He would know that she saw them. But Riza thinks of her own mother, who had been no older than this woman. _My Riza,_ Mother had loved to say, hugging and cuddling her, kissing her forehead and cheeks. _My sweet little Riza._

Mother, who hadn’t been able to hurt a fly, who had ushered them out of the open windows, waving a dish towel, rather than killing them. If her mother knew what her daughter had become...

Riza’s eyes blur with tears. She lowers her rifle. She looks at Reid. It’s a risk, to her reputation, to his regard for her, to her freedom, to her life itself (senior leadership has shot two infantrymen just this week for insubordination), but--

“Don’t,” she pleads.

Reid keeps his rifle trained on them, finger on the trigger, for a few agonizing moments. A muscle in his jaw twitches with strain. And then he lowers his gun.

They wait until the mother and daughter disappear from view before picking up their weapons again. 

-

Riza always waits until well into the night to shower. 

It’s a risky choice, something she’s reminded of every night, but it’s her only option. The shower facilities are co-ed (she hasn’t seen another woman soldier in Ishval) and she can’t possibly go during the daytime or evening. Not just because she would be surrounded by men showering on either side of her, separated only by the flimsy curtains hung from metal rods, but because she can’t take the risk of anyone catching sight of her back. There are a dozen State Alchemists stationed here, and Riza has never forgotten Roy’s warning. _Every alchemist in Amestris - in the world, even - would do anything to attain the knowledge that you hold the key to._

Riza recoils from the thought even more now than she used to in the past. Roy is destructive enough on his own. The thought of there being _more_ of him, in Amestris, in Drachma and Creta and Aerugo, is nothing short of terrifying. 

She showers and gets dressed quickly, as she always does, hyper-aware of every sound she hears outside her tiny, makeshift shower stall. Just because her fellow snipers are kind and decent (and _had_ been kind and decent, before desertion, before bullets to the head) doesn’t mean that all of the soldiers here are. The way that some of them look at her makes Riza’s skin crawl. Makes her terribly aware that even though she is tall for a woman, and strong, the men here are almost all taller and stronger than her. She’s lost count of the number of fellow soldiers who have stood too close to her in line at the mess hall, deliberately brushing against her, insisting that it was an accident when she stumbled away. It’s happened enough that Reid and Anders began standing on either side of her in line whenever they are in the mess, providing a protective barrier of space.

Trips to the outhouses at the perimeters of camp and the shower facilities always make her nervous, and Riza glances over her shoulder every couple of steps. Once, briefly, she had considered asking Anders or Reid to stand guard in front of the entrance to the shower facilities to make sure that no one else entered while she was in there, but she had dismissed the idea as too awkward and embarrassing. 

Riza leaves, scanning the perimeter cautiously. She turns a corner, and nearly bumps into a soldier standing just outside the building, in the dark. Waiting for her. 

It’s against regulations, a court-martial offense for her to threaten a fellow soldier, but Riza pulls the pistol from the pocket of her cloak and aims it at center mass. He retreats several paces, lifting his hands up to show that he means no harm. When he snaps his fingers, the gas lamp he’s holding comes alight. The lamp throws a circle of warm orange light on them, on his abashed face. 

“Sorry,” Roy says. “I should have known better.”

Riza lowers her weapon and pockets it, her heart pounding. “Major Mustang.” They haven’t spoken since their brief encounter last week, with Captain Hughes and that other State Alchemist, Solf Kimblee. “How did you know I was here?” 

The thought of him seeking out her team and asking Major Hall for her whereabouts makes her a little uncomfortable. The last thing she needs is her commanding officer thinking that she’s fraternizing with a State Alchemist. It wouldn’t be prohibited, technically. Though Roy is higher-ranking than her, he’s not her commanding officer. It still wouldn’t do her reputation any favors. 

Roy shrugs. “I figured that you had to shower late at night, on account of…” He trails off, clears his throat, gestures to the region of her upper body awkwardly, an all-encompassing answer of _your gender, the dangerous secret encoded on your back._

Riza folds her arms into the sleeves of her cloak, shielding herself. (Something she should have done two years ago at Hawkeye Manor, instead of being a stupid, trusting, naive little girl.) “What do you want?” It’s blunt to the point of being rude, and she would have never dreamed that she’d ever address Roy, of all people, like this, but she can’t imagine why he would seek her out here, late at night. She’s already given him everything he wanted, everything he needed, everything that made him the Flame Alchemist of renown, the _Hero of Ishval._

Roy winces, almost imperceptibly. Riza has the feeling that he had understood something of the words she hadn’t said. He sets his lamp down on the ground beside him, and shoves his hands into his pockets. “I wanted to check in on you.” The words are addressed to her feet. “We didn’t have much of an opportunity to speak, the last time we saw one another.”

“I’m fine.” The words are a lie of hideous proportions, but they slip out reflexively nevertheless.

Roy looks up at her, and the intensity in his dark gaze leaves her breathless, for just a split second. “I heard what happened to the other four snipers.” 

“I--” Riza remembers, remembers the horror of Patrickson, the empty space at their table at the mess hall. The look in Brody’s eyes afterwards, in all of their eyes, and then, just a week later - she hadn’t seen it, but she had been walking up to the command center with Reid to give their report, and she’d noticed Brody approaching from the other side of the path to give his own. She had glanced away, distracted by a couple of infantrymen who had been arguing with one another, and then she’d heard Reid gasp. He had grabbed her and pulled her into his chest and said _don’t look,_ and then she’d heard the gunshot--

Riza doesn’t have words. She stares at him, mute. She can’t say _I’m fine._

Roy takes a step closer to her. “This isn’t your fault, Hawkeye.” He indicates the perimeter of the camp, to where they go out and slaughter Ishvalans every day. She hasn’t heard this kind of urgency in his voice since the terrible afternoon that Father had died. “Don’t think of doing anything rash. We, the State Alchemists - we’re the ones to blame for this. We’re the ones who are responsible for most of this carnage. Everything else - the infantry, the snipers - are drops in a bucket.”

Riza lifts her hands, as though she could ward him off, as though she could push away the words. “Drops in a bucket?” She isn’t sure if she wants to laugh disbelievingly or start crying. “I killed ten people today, Major. I killed tweve yesterday. These are human lives, that _I took,_ that _I’m_ responsible for taking. They’re not _drops in a bucket._ ”

“I phrased that poorly.” Roy reaches for her shoulder, and then seems to reconsider, dropping his hand to his side and looking utterly miserable. “I’m sorry. I believed in the vision of the military, and I encouraged you to enlist. I… I told you that the knowledge of Flame Alchemy was in good hands with me. I betrayed your trust, and everything that your father wanted for his legacy. You must despise me.”

“I don’t,” Riza replies. Surprisingly, it is the truth. “I’m just…” She’s struck with a sudden feeling of weariness. All she wants is to return to her tent and lie down in her cot and go to sleep, and never wake up again. She wraps her arms around herself again, and shakes her head. “I’m just disappointed.”

(She had thought Roy was good and kind and principled, all that a man should be. Everything that Father wasn’t. In the end, Father, who had refused to join the military and use his alchemy to serve their ends, had been more principled than Roy, and that knowledge _stings._ For all of his failings, Father had never taken a life, and Roy has taken hundreds. Maybe more.) 

Roy stares at her, and for a moment, he looks like she had slapped him across the face. “I… I can’t make this right,” he says. “I can’t undo what I’ve done here. But I’ll try to make amends, in every way I can.”

Riza is too exhausted to ask how. She moves past him, her shoulder brushing against his. “Good night, Major.” 

She can feel his eyes on her as she starts walking back to the main camp. The conversation and the emotions it has brought up have worn on her nerves, after a nightmare of a day, and she feels rubbed raw and achy. 

It’s past ten at night and she shouldn’t delay getting to sleep, but Riza lingers outside of her tent, looking up at the sky. The entire time she had been in the shower, she had been thinking of the mother and daughter from this morning. Wondering if they had managed to escape into the relative safety of the desert. Wondering if they’re curled up somewhere, under these stars. The woman hadn’t been carrying any supplies with her - just the clothes on her back. If they’re alive, they must be hungry, and thirsty, and cold. And scared.

“Hawkeye?” 

The voice startles her, and Riza whirls, her hand going to her weapon again. Reid stops dead in his approach, lifting his hands. “It’s just me.”

She relaxes her posture, dropping her hands to her sides, but her heart is still racing. They haven’t talked about what happened on the roof of the hospital. Part of her had been afraid that Reid would go to Major Hall when they returned from their shift; that Hall would have called her into the command center, and there would be a couple of security officers waiting inside, holding shackles in their hands. 

Nothing had happened. They had given their report (a bloodless euphemism - their _kill count_ ) to Hall, Reid hadn’t said a word, and they had gone to eat dinner with the rest of the team. Afterwards, instead of sitting by the fire with everyone else, he had disappeared for a long walk.

“What are you doing up?” he asks now, coming to stand beside her. 

“The same thing you are, I think.” Riza draws her white cloak closer around her and looks up at him. They do most of their work either kneeling or lying flat, so she forgets how much taller he is when they’re both standing. She speaks, before she can lose her nerve. “Thank you. For this morning. For not saying anything to Hall.”

“Don’t mention it. Really.” Reid looks up at the sky, at the stars above them. He sighs, and ruffles his hair, loose for once from the short ponytail he normally wears it in. It’s damp; he must have left the showers just before her. “Do you think they got away?” He’s so quiet that she can barely hear him. “It looked like they were headed east. I saw that freak Kimblee approaching from that direction with his men.” 

Riza hadn’t seen that. Something inside her clenches up at the memory of her last interaction with Kimblee. “I like to think so,” she whispers. Her voice catches. “I have to think so.”

Reid doesn’t say anything. He puts a hand on her back, right on her shoulder blade, something he’s never done before. On any other day, any other night, Riza would have flinched, startled, remembering the pressure of Father’s hand there, as he held her down against the mattress. Now, all she feels is the silent comfort that had been intended. That she needs. She remembers how Mother had rubbed her back every night, soothing her when she had been afraid of the dark. How Father rubbed the healing ointment into her skin nine years later, relieving the pain that he had inflicted.

It feels so good to be touched. She had felt this when Rebecca hugged her goodbye before her deployment; she had felt this every time Bresler tapped her elbow or arm or shoulder to correct her form on the range - satisfaction and pleasure that sunk deep inside her, down to her core. At the same time, there was a yearning for more. More than anything, she wanted to be hugged tightly and held, kisses pressed to her forehead and hair and cheeks, and told she was good.

Riza has always controlled the impulse. The desire. She’s always known that it’s not appropriate for her to want that kind of touch and comfort from her best friend. Or her marksmanship instructor and academic advisor. Or her father’s apprentice, back when Roy had been her father’s apprentice. 

But tonight, after everything, her resolve and restraint weakens. Riza leans against Reid, leans into the touch, and then he’s pulling her into his arms, holding her tight, caressing her back and arms and shoulders. She buries her head in his chest, her hands fisting in the rough material of his dark undershirt, and all the breath leaves her body in a shaky gasp. It feels so good to be held. It’s just what she has always wanted. 

Then Reid tilts her head back, cupping her face with both of his hands, and kisses her. 

It isn’t what she had imagined, for her first kiss. It isn’t gentle and slow and sweet. (It isn’t Roy.) It’s hungry and intense, and Riza stills, because this isn’t what she had wanted. She had just wanted to be hugged and held and comforted. 

But she doesn’t have the words to say so, not with Reid’s mouth on hers, and she realizes that it’s not so bad anyway. One of his arms wraps around her shoulders, and the other curls around her waist, and he _is_ holding her close, touching her. The contact, the closeness and the warmth, feeds her yearning for touch and kindles something deeper, at the same time, something ravenous and desperate. 

Riza stands on the tips of her toes, pressing herself closer against Reid’s chest, parting her lips for him, letting him tangle his fingers in her damp hair, gently tugging her head back. A tiny noise works its way free of her, almost a moan. Riza knows a moment of embarrassment, but Reid slides his hands down over her sides, making her do it again, and she grasps, belatedly, that it’s not a bad thing.

It isn’t the only thing she realizes. She has no business standing out in the open like this. She had just been worried about her reputation earlier, at the thought that Major Hall might think she was fraternizing with Roy. Riza pulls herself away from Reid, from the kiss, and instantly misses the closeness. She wraps her fingers around his wrist and leads him into her tent without a word, without ceremony. She knows the implication of what she’s doing, what she’s inviting, but she doesn’t care. She just wants _more._ She wants to be touched again.

They kiss in the dark, discarding their cloaks, kicking off their boots. His hands are firm on her hips, and Riza’s are tentative on his shoulders, on his strong arms. Reid is the one to pull away this time. “Light the lamp?” he asks, caressing her face, the side of her neck. She feels the calluses on his fingers from long months, years, of handling sniper rifles.

It’s the last thing Riza wants to do. ( _Her back_ \--) But she doesn’t know how to say no, either, to ask for them to stay in the dark. She’s never done any of this before and she doesn’t want to do it wrong or disappoint him. She wants to please. She wants to do it right. 

Her fingers fumble on the switch to her own lamp, in the corner of her small tent. The light it throws off is weak. Hopefully Reid will be too distracted by kissing her to notice her back, and he’s not an alchemist who would be able to understand any of the runes, and Riza figures that she will be _on_ her back for most of it, anyway. He’s sitting on the edge of her cot, watching her uncertainly, as if he had expected her to change her mind while across the room. 

Riza approaches, a little timidly. Reid holds his arms out to her, and she climbs into his lap. She hasn’t been held like this since Mother died. It feels nice. He strokes her back through her short-sleeved dark undershirt, and it brings back old memories and old wants. Riza is distracted by his lips on hers, though, distracted enough that she doesn’t even worry about whether she’s good at kissing. She just follows his lead and he seems to like it. 

“God, Hawkeye.” Reid says it like a prayer, low and rough, and he tightens his grip on her waist. “You feel so good.”

The compliment, the tone of his voice, makes her tremble. Riza rubs his shoulders. “You’re not angry at me?” she asks. “For earlier?”

“No. Of course I’m not.” Reid kisses her throat, the side of her neck, his teeth grazing her skin, all the way up to a sensitive spot underneath her ear. Riza hadn’t realized how afraid of his disapproval she had been until just this instant. At the confirmation that he’s not upset at her (that she’s still good), she practically melts, winding her hands in his hair and pulling him closer. Reid’s hands slip underneath the hem of her shirt, skin touching skin. 

It isn’t until he eases it off that Riza experiences a stab of fear, like she’d felt on her first day in combat, on her first day of the Academy, on the day Father had tattooed her. She looks into his eyes, sees the admiration turn into a frown as he brushes his fingers against her back. “What the…” Reid starts, and Riza twists a little awkwardly, trying to angle herself in such a way that he won’t get a full view of it. “Is that a tattoo? Aren’t you too young to have one?” The realization of what he had said dawns on him then, and he closes his eyes tight for a second, pained. “Oh, god.”

“Please don’t ask questions.” It’s rare for Riza to assert herself so boldly, and she’s proud that she doesn’t stammer. She kisses him, gently pushing him down onto the too-narrow cot before pulling his shirt off, and the distraction works. 

She’s nervous when he takes her bra off, and she covers herself with her arms. But Reid leans in over her and kisses her neck and shoulders and arms and tells her that she’s beautiful, gorgeous, until Riza relaxes, wrapping her arms around him instead, letting him look at her and touch her, and kiss her. Riza forgets her fear in the face of the sweet words and how good it feels to be touched and praised. To have someone pay this much attention to her. She likes this, she decides, tracing her fingertips against the hard muscles of Reid’s arms. She likes this a lot.

Whenever Riza heard that sex hurt, she’d heard the word _hurt_ and reflexively remembered the shocking sting, the _burn,_ of the needle and the ink and Father pushing her back down onto the mattress. Internally, she had shuddered; she’d felt afraid. But it doesn’t hurt nearly as much as she thought it would. It doesn’t hurt nearly as much as the tattooing had hurt. Riza stretches out underneath Reid, arches her back and her hips, muffles her soft sounds in Reid’s neck. He strokes her hair and kisses her forehead, her cheeks, her lips, and whispers that she feels amazing, incredible, perfect. The praise; the sensation of being that close to someone, makes tears spring into her eyes. It’s like she’s been waiting for this for years. For once, the little girl’s voice in her head that cries _unloved, unworthy, unloved, unworthy,_ is silent. 

She doesn’t want it to stop, but they do, eventually, and Riza is grateful for the contraceptive injection that she and Rebecca had both gotten from the physician at the Academy just before her deployment. She hadn’t wanted to - had recoiled from the mere thought of a needle piercing her skin again - but Rebecca had insisted that it was a good idea. _We’ll both be eighteen in September, Riza. It’s the smart thing to do._ Rebecca had sat next to her and held her hand, talking about holiday plans to distract her, and Riza had rested her head against her friend’s shoulder until it was over. 

She is warm and relaxed and tired, even more so than she’d been earlier. Reid wraps an arm around her, pulling her close, and she rests her forehead against his shoulder; lets him run his fingers over her back. Riza closes her eyes.

“I should go before sunrise,” Reid says quietly. “But I can stay for a few hours. Unless you’d rather I leave.”

She doesn’t want him to let go of her yet. She wants to savor the sensation of being held. “Stay,” Riza murmurs. “Please.” 

He does, and Riza falls asleep in his arms.

-

They talk while returning from their shift the following day and come to a mutual agreement that it had been a completely inappropriate thing to do, considering her age and position as a cadet and his age and rank. 

“We shouldn’t have done that.” Reid sounds ashamed. He glances at her out of the corner of his eye, and then looks straight ahead. “I shouldn’t have ever touched you.” 

Riza nods. “Yes.”

“I’m sorry, Hawkeye.”

“Don’t be.” Riza takes a deep breath. She feels so vulnerable, and she knows she is breaking the rules, conducting herself poorly as a female cadet and as a female soldier, but all she can think of is how she had felt last night. She hadn’t felt like a disappointment. She hadn’t felt inadequate. She hadn’t felt lonely, starved for attention and affection. She’d felt loved, treasured, special, _good._ ( _Good girl, Riza._ ) “I would do it again.”

-

They do.

-

There are fewer Ishvalans every day, and finally, _finally,_ the conflict (massacre) is declared to have come to an end. The soldiers and State Alchemists begin shipping out, back to their original command centers around Amestris. 

Reid, Anders, and Philips leave first, with the transport headed to Southern Command. Reid hugs her tight when he says goodbye, strokes her bangs away from her forehead, and kisses the top of her head. He apologizes again, and tells her to be safe and take care of herself. Riza watches him go, and she wraps her arms around herself, somewhat bereft. 

Riza and Major Hall are the only ones of the team left. His transport is due to leave at noon. She finds him in the mess hall, sitting alone at the table where their entire team used to sit. He has a bruised apple resting in front of him, untouched. Riza looks at the table and she sees it as it was, months ago, with all of them sitting there and sharing dinner together. But Brody and Patrickson have been buried out here in the desert, because soldiers who commit suicide don’t get to have their bodies sent back to their families. For all she knows, Lucas and Marshall’s bones have been buried by the sand. Major Hall hasn’t been the same since.

Riza approaches tentatively. Hall looks up at her, and gives her his best approximation of a smile. “Hawkeye. I was going to find you before I left. Have a seat.”

She does, settling herself on the chair across from him. He’s lost even more weight than she has. His skin seems to hang on his bones - the way Father’s had, in those last months. “Major Hall, sir,” Riza says softly. “Thank you for everything. It has been an honor to serve under your command. I couldn’t have asked for a better first commanding officer.” 

“You’re welcome, Cadet. It was an honor to lead you all.” He stumbles on the last word. “I couldn’t have asked for a better team.” 

Riza looks away, giving him a moment to gather himself. When she looks back, she finds Hall studying her. “You have a lot to be proud of, Cadet.”

“It doesn’t feel like it, sir.” It’s an overly candid response, and Riza winces, opening her mouth to apologize. 

Hall lifts his hand, forestalling her. “I know it doesn’t. But you’re not even out of the Academy, and you’re one of the best snipers I’ve ever led. More importantly than that - you have fortitude. You have _strength._ ” He leans forward, tapping the table. “You’re, what - eighteen, now?”

“Yes, sir.” 

“What we had to do here killed men twice your age, with decades more experience than you do. Or it drove them to desertion. But you stayed strong. You withstood this hell.”

Riza stammers her thanks, taken aback. Hall leans back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. “You have iron in you, Hawkeye,” he says, after a short pause. “You’ll go far. You could go all the way to the top. Olivier Armstrong made it. There’s no reason you can’t. You’re as tough as she is.”

Tears sting the back of her eyes. “Thank you, sir.”

The bell rings, signaling a quarter to noon, and Hall stands. Riza does as well, saluting him. He returns the gesture. “You’ll always have a good reference in me,” he tells her. “Take care, Cadet Hawkeye.”

Riza sits, for a little while, weighed down by it all. By the knowledge that Ishval is all but depopulated, thanks to her and her fellow soldiers. By the fact that Brody, Patrickson, Lucas, and Marshall should have shipped back to their command centers today, with the rest of the team, and they won’t ever go home. 

And by Hall’s words. _You’ll go far. You could go all the way to the top._

There had been a time, just last December, that the affirmation would have become her lifeblood. That she would have been motivated to pursue the promise in Hall’s words, and strive not just for a position as a Captain or Major (the absolute upper limit for female soldiers’ career aspirations, with one notable exception), but to consider herself as a Lieutenant Colonel, a Colonel, or even a General. 

But now… she doesn’t want to be at the top of a structure like _this._ A structure that orders the mass execution of innocent civilians. Riza recoils from the thought.

She pushes herself back from the table and strides out of the mess hall, suddenly desperate to get away, get some air. The outpost is nearly deserted, save for the soldiers and support staff who are heading back to Central City with the transport at fifteen-hundred hours. Riza walks, without knowing where she’s headed. She ends up wandering the perimeter of the outpost, lost in thought, her feet sinking into the sand.

She doesn’t notice the body until she nearly trips on it. 

At first, it looks like nothing more than a small bundle of discarded clothing, but then Riza sees the slender, fragile arms and legs tucked underneath the white robes. It’s a child. She looks around, uselessly, but of course there are no parents in sight. Just this child, with no one left to bury him. 

The fallen Amestrian soldiers, even the ones who had ended their own lives, had been buried.

Riza doesn’t have a shovel, so she sinks to her knees and starts digging with her hands. It’s slow work, getting deep enough so that the child will be safe from any predators that come sniffing around after dark, but she finally digs an adequate grave.

She picks the child up, carefully. Looks at his face, his dark brown skin, his white hair, his unseeing red eyes, the trickle of blood spilling out from the side of his head. He’s so light, in her arms. She’s never held a child before. Riza starts to cry.

She rests him in the grave. She should say a few words, but she isn’t capable of anything. She buries him, piling sand atop the grave, the sand moist with her fallen tears. 

“Hawkeye?”

The word breaks Riza out of her reverie. She recognizes the voice, and the concern in it. “Aren’t you going back?” Roy asks. “You don’t want to be left behind.” 

She has no idea what time it is. She should get her pack and rifle from her tent. Still, Riza keeps at her work. She hears him approach her. “...Was that a friend of yours?”

He sounds worried. Riza bows her head, pressing her palms into the sand. “No,” she manages. “An Ishvalan child. One left dead by the side of the road.” 

Roy steps closer, hovering near her. “Let’s go,” he encourages, in the special tone that people use when they’re speaking to someone they think is fragile, on the verge of collapse. “The war is over now.” 

The words are true, but empty. Riza doesn’t move. “The fighting may be.” She’s struck with a sense of awful weariness, again. “But the nightmares of what we did here aren’t over. They’ll stay with me, as long as I live.” 

She wonders if Roy has nightmares. He doesn’t see people close up like she does, through the scope of her rifle. The Flame Alchemist is best known for his brutal, ranged attacks. More tears spill over, and Riza wipes her eyes with the sleeve of her white cloak. She hadn’t planned on saying this, but the words slip out anyway. “I believed in you. I trusted you with my father’s research.”

Roy doesn’t say a word in his own defense. And now that he’s here, now that he has found her instead of her having to seek him out wherever he ends up posted after this - it’s the chance that she’s been waiting for. It’s a sign that this truly is the way for her to proceed, instead of the more difficult alternatives that she’s been puzzling over for months. Riza takes a deep breath, and wills her voice to remain steady. “I have a favor to ask, Mustang. Please burn this off my back.” 

It seems to take Roy a moment to realize what she’s referring to. “How could I do something like that?” He sounds horrified, disgusted, and Riza’s resolve almost wavers.

“At least--” She fights to get the words out without breaking down again. “I may not ever be able to atone for what I’ve done here. But at least I can destroy the secrets on my back, so that no one else can ever learn Flame Alchemy.” 

_So that I can never make the mistake of trusting another man with that terrible secret,_ is what she doesn’t say. Riza stands, with effort. It feels like there’s a tremendous weight pressing down on her shoulders. She finally turns to face Roy. He looks pale and stricken. “I want you to set me free from this burden,” she says, slowly, deliberately. “Please. I’m begging you.” 

Roy’s fists clench as he stares at her, troubled, and he’s silent for so long that Riza thinks he will surely refuse. “All right,” he tells her, at last, and her knees almost buckle with relief. “I’ll leave as little trace of it as I can.”

Riza smiles, for the first time in what feels like months. “Thank you.” 

“Come on.” He turns away, as if unable to look at her, at the child’s grave, for a moment longer. 

She follows, after looking back at the grave one last time. Roy leads her to his tent, where he grabs his pack, and then they stop at hers, where Riza shoulders her pack and her rifle. She had loved it, when Bresler had given it to her. Now, after all that she’s done, she feels the briefest shiver of fear when she looks at the weapon. She had loved firearms, as an Academy student; been eternally fascinated by the intricacies of how they worked. Perhaps it had been naive of her, but she hadn’t realized what a terrible tool they could be in the hands of a man (or woman) without scruples.

Roy checks his silver State Alchemist pocket watch. “We have thirty minutes. Let me get you something to drink.”

They go to the mess hall, and he brings her a tall glass of ice-cold water, sitting across from her at the same table where she had sat with Hall earlier in the day. Riza wraps her hands around the glass, letting the condensation cool her sand-and-sun-burned hands, before drinking gratefully. She had been out in the direct desert sun for more than two hours. “Thank you,” she says, setting the glass down. 

“You’re welcome.” For the first time, Riza notices the dark circles underneath Roy’s eyes. “Will you return to the Academy? It must be strange to contemplate, after…” He gestures to their surroundings. 

It is. Riza can’t imagine air conditioning, proper bathrooms, proper food, sitting in a classroom, sleeping in the girls’ dorm instead of in a small tent. She can’t imagine spending entire days and weeks and months without making a single kill-shot. 

“Yes. I’ll finish the academic coursework that I missed out on, and graduate at the end of next term.” Riza runs a hand through her hair. “Or I could drop out,” she says, voicing the thought that she’s only ever mentioned to Reid. “Major Hall told me that I’ve earned a salary for my time here. It’s been deposited into an account in my name, in Central. The sum is...decent. I could take that money and put it toward one of the postsecondary certifications that I wanted, and toward rent for an apartment.”

“A fresh start.” Roy looks almost envious. “Will you?”

“I don’t know.” Riza looks down at her hands. “Part of me wants to never pick up a gun again. To move into a place in the city and enroll in a postsecondary program, far away from Central Command and the military academy, and pretend that I never did all of this. But at the same time, that feels...wrong. I could be a veterinarian, I could spend all day tending to people’s beloved pets and to stray animals, but then how would that help me pay the price for what I’ve done here? It wouldn’t. None of the Ishvalans get to continue on with their lives as if nothing happened, so why should I have the chance to do that?” 

Roy studies her, and Riza shifts in her seat, self-conscious of the small outburst. “What are you going to do, Major?”

“I’ve been promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, and assigned to East City Command.” 

It’s a tremendous accomplishment, at his age, but Roy doesn’t look happy or proud. His features are set in grim, determined lines. “Congratulations,” Riza says. “You must be the youngest person to ever hold that rank.” 

“It’s just the first step in a long journey.” Roy glances around the mess hall, noting its emptiness, and then leans in toward her, lowering his voice. His knees brush hers, under the table. “I want to continue to move forward and upward in rank until I can supplant the Fuhrer.”

Riza narrowly avoids choking on her water. She sets the glass down on the table harder than she had intended. “What?” 

“Someone has to imprison him and hold him accountable.” Roy’s composure slips, and she catches a glimpse of the fury she had seen months ago, when he had confronted the Crimson Alchemist. “He and the rest of the senior staff who signed off on this atrocity. They’ll have to answer for their role in this. We’ll all have to answer for it.”

Riza stares, shocked. Treason. Roy Mustang is sitting in an Amestrian army outpost and openly discussing _treason._ “Why are you telling me this?” she whispers. “This - you could be court-martialed and executed for even talking about such things. Please don’t tell me you’ve talked about this with others.”

“I haven’t, save for Hughes.” Roy sits back and runs a hand through his hair, seeming to regain some of his self-possession. 

Riza shakes her head. “Why me?” 

“You trusted me with your secret, years ago.” Roy smiles, tiny and bitter. “So I’m trusting you with mine.” 

Riza regards him, lost for words. She remembers the way they used to sit at the kitchen table in Hawkeye Manor over dinner, both of them reading their textbooks, when she had been twelve and he had been sixteen. She would have never imagined this, as a girl with a crush on her father’s alchemy apprentice. Never imagined how the two of them would end up bound by their dangerous secrets. 

“I--” Riza swallows. “Your secret is safe with me.”

“I know it is.” Roy folds his hands in front of him. “I’ll need allies that I can trust. If you choose to stay in the military, you know where to find me.”

Riza nods, feeling somewhat dazed. “Yes, sir.” 

-

They sit next to each other on the transport from Ishval, on the military convoy ride and then the train journey, talking occasionally. Roy is heading back to Central, to stay with his aunt and sisters for a month of leave before he reports for duty in East City. He tells her more about Hughes, about Hughes' position at Central Command. They talk about the Crimson Alchemist’s arrest, and her sniper team in Ishval and the men in Roy’s platoon, and what the academy has been like for her. 

Roy confesses that he had been poor at marksmanship, and even worse at hand-to-hand combat. _Hughes destroyed me, every time_ , he says ruefully. He shares the story of how he had fallen off the tower while trying to rappel down it with the other cadets, and the story of Hughes and the quiche. Riza tells him about Rebecca, the shooting range, and the chocolate pudding shared late at night in the mess hall. She tells him about how she and Rebecca hold the top two spots in academics and marksmanship, much to the frustration of the male cadets. Roy grins, the expression sweet but fleeting.

They talk, a little bit, about sleepless nights and nightmares.

-

The train comes to a stop, and Riza opens her heavy, aching eyes. She registers warmth against one side of her face, the strong lines of a man’s shoulder, and a familiar dark overcoat; a familiar spicy scent.

Riza sits up, mortified. She had nestled against Roy’s side in sleep, tucking her head into the spot between his shoulder and chest. “I’m sorry. You should have woken me earlier.”

Roy shrugs. “It’s fine. You looked like you needed the rest.”

They stand, grabbing their packs, and Riza shoulders her rifle. There are quite a few people on the platform despite the late hour, between the group of disembarking soldiers and the friends and family members that have come to greet them. Everywhere she looks, there are joyful reunions between parents and children, and countless soldiers returning to the arms of their sweethearts. It makes her chest ache when she sees the embraces, the kisses. 

“Riza! Over here!”

Riza turns sharply at the familiar voice. Through the crowd, she catches a glimpse of Rebecca standing at the edge of the platform, waving excitedly. She waves back, and the smile still feels strange and unfamiliar on her face. Before today, she hasn't smiled in so long. 

“I’m glad you have someone here for you,” Roy says, as they sidestep two excited children that plow into the arms of the soldier behind them.

Riza looks at him. “Do you--”

“My aunt’s over there.” Riza follows his gaze to an older, dark-haired woman in a glamorous coat, leaning against a stone pillar. 

They turn to face each other before returning to their own loved ones, and Riza is reminded of the last time they had stood like this, on a dark night in Ishval. This time, Roy does put a hand on her shoulder, for just a moment. The weight of his hand is solid and reassuring. “Take care of yourself, Hawkeye.”

“You too, Lieutenant Colonel.” Riza hesitates, before deciding to remind him of his promise. “I’ll visit you in East City when I’m finished with my term.” 

Roy inclines his head, and she sees the regret written clearly on his face. “Of course.”

Riza goes to Rebecca then. Rebecca is cradling a big bouquet of daisies, bright yellow and so cheerful, and she is beaming. Riza almost stops dead, almost backs away, because Rebecca (with her sensible career choice of administration and support, with her bloodless internship at Central Command under General Lee) looks so happy, so innocent, so different from Riza, and Riza doesn’t want to taint her by association. 

Then Rebecca holds an arm out to her, and Riza’s feet carry her forward, seemingly of their own volition.

“Welcome back, Riza,” Rebecca says, hugging her tight. “Now, was that your mysterious soldier boy that you were just talking to? I bet you have a lot to tell me.”

“I do.” Riza rests her head against Rebecca’s shoulder, returning the embrace, and closes her eyes against the tears.

* * *

_to be continued_

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everybody who left your comments and kudos on the previous chapter - it always makes me so happy to see them. 
> 
> There were a lot of things about this chapter that were really difficult for me to write, as Riza lost what remained of her innocence. As always, I hope that I am handling her situation, and the issues that have been borne out of her past traumas, with respect and empathy. 
> 
> I would love to hear what you thought. Additionally, I am on tumblr @lantur if you would like to connect. :)


	4. four

Riza and Rebecca have the dorm room to themselves, when they return to the academy campus. Riza sets her daisies in the water-filled vase that Rebecca had left on the dresser. The thought of a shower is tempting, but she is weary, so weary. She sets her things on the floor and lies down on her bunk, pressing the heels of her hands to her eyes. The bed creaks as Rebecca perches on the edge, and then Riza feels something cool rest against her elbow.

Riza opens her eyes, and turns her head to the side. It’s a plastic cup of chocolate pudding and a spoon.

“For breakfast tomorrow,” Rebecca explains, worry clear in her dark eyes. “Or for now. If you want to talk.” She hesitates. “I don’t want to pressure you. But if you do want to, I’m here.”

Riza’s throat aches. She can’t imagine saying anything, because there are no words to encompass the terrible enormity of what she had done. But she looks up at Rebecca, and she’s speaking before making the conscious decision to.

“I feel like they lied to me, Becca.” It’s a struggle to get the words out. It’s like there’s something lodged in her chest, hard and unyielding as a stone. “I knew that I would have to kill, when I enrolled in the sniper program. When they sent me to Ishval. But they told me, they told all of us, that we’d have to kill enemy combatants. That was a choice I was willing to make. They didn’t tell us that we were going to have to kill _everybody._ If I knew that, I would have never, ever, have--” 

Riza’s voice cracks, and the tears flow over. She presses her hands to her face again, trying to hold them back in. Rebecca’s hand is gentle on her arm. “I know, Riza. I know.”

Rebecca stays with her while she weeps. She brings her a box of soft tissues from the dresser, and rests her hand on her back. It takes Riza a long time to gather her composure again. “I’m so sorry.” She scrubs at her face awkwardly, haphazardly, with a tissue. Her eyes are swollen and it’s hard to breathe. 

“Don’t apologize. You did the same thing for me when Thomas relapsed.” Rebecca nudges her. “That’s what friends are for.” 

Riza takes Rebecca’s hand, and squeezes it. “Thank you.” 

-

They eat their chocolate pudding, and eventually, talk about easier things. How generally insufferable the male cadets in their class continue to be, what Major Hall and the rest of Sniper Team Seven had been like, Rebecca’s internship with General Lee, and her flirtation with a young Warrant Officer on Lee’s staff. 

“We made out in a supply closet while working late one night,” Rebecca confides. “And almost got to third base, too. We might have done a bit more, if Lee’s damn cuckoo clock hadn’t rang out twenty-hundred hours and I realized that I had to get back here before the gates locked for the night.”

“A supply closet?” Riza smiles. “I bet you thought about it every time you passed that closet afterwards.”

“Oh, I did.” Rebecca heaves a longing sigh. “Now, what about you?”

“What about me?”

It’s no use, playing dumb with Rebecca. Her friend raises an eyebrow at her, and Riza averts her eyes. Her cheeks feel hot. “Well,” she confesses. “I - you know.”

Rebecca fights to hold back a grin, and loses. “I don’t, actually.” 

Riza traces circles against the bedspread with her fingertips. Talking about it, even with her best friend, makes her nervous. She knows it hadn’t been a smart decision, getting physically involved with a fellow soldier on her unit. Someone older than her, and higher in rank, too. It’s everything that people warn female cadets and female soldiers about. “I slept with someone.”

Rebecca squeals, and Riza rolls her eyes, momentarily forgetting her apprehension. “How was it?” Rebecca asks, leaning forward.

Riza thinks back to those nights, to Reid’s hands on her skin, the press of their bodies tangled up on her narrow cot, blanket pushed to the side. Quiet words exchanged between kisses, murmurs of contentment and satisfaction and praise, _that feels so good,_ you _feel so good, that’s perfect._ The sweet security of leaning in for another kiss or asking for another touch and always getting it. _More, please--_

She’s unprepared for the sorrow that washes over her; the sudden pang of longing. “It was amazing,” Riza says softly, and her fist clenches around the bedspread. 

Rebecca makes a sound of pure envy. “With--” She gestures into midair, making an approximation of Roy’s height. 

Riza coughs. “No.”

Rebecca splutters on her drink of water. “What?”

“We’re friends.” Riza always stammered and hesitated around the term before, when referring to Roy. For some reason, it slips out easier this time. It shouldn’t, considering everything that happened in Ishval, and everything that she had thought of him. But the conversation and confidences and promises that they exchanged today had changed something between them. 

Rebecca hums, unconvinced. “Friends don’t look at each other the way you two did at the train station. Anyway, tell me more about your man.”

Riza does, haltingly. Rebecca offers no judgment. “I’m glad you had someone. To make it all more...bearable.”

There’s the ache again, the stab of loneliness. “I am, too.” 

They stay up talking until two hours past midnight, until Rebecca falls asleep right on Riza’s bed with her back against the wall, legs stretched out in front of her. Riza climbs up to Rebecca’s bunk and retrieves her friend’s pillow and blanket. She carefully tucks the pillow behind Rebecca, placing the blanket over her. 

Riza lies down, curling up under the covers. She’s exhausted, bone-weary, her thoughts sluggish, but sleep is slow to come. She’s back home at the Academy, resting in her bed, while the Ishvalans rest in mass graves under the sand. She’s back home, but there are no homes left, in Ishval. What few Ishvalans who had managed to escape the region are refugees, with nowhere to call their own. No roof over their heads, no comfortable beds to rest in. 

It’s not fair. It’s a seething, venomous sense of injustice, and that’s new to her. Riza has never really felt anger, before. Just sadness. (Always, sadness, and the unceasing desire to prove herself.) She hadn’t really been angry at Father, ever, or at the classmates or fellow cadets who said unkind things about her. Or even at the soldiers in Ishval who looked at her like a piece of meat. 

But when Riza thinks of Fuhrer Bradley, of the senior military leadership who had supported his loathsome order, she feels rage unfurl within her, like some hideous beast spreading its wings. The Fuhrer was supposed to be like a father to the people of Amestris, someone to protect and guide the people of the nation. He had betrayed them, instead. Raised his hands to strike them down, in an act of unfathomable cruelty. And from what Rebecca had told her about the Generals at Central Command, not a single person had lifted a finger to stop him. 

No wonder Roy wants to tear it all down. 

Riza closes her eyes, and remembers his words. _Someone has to imprison Bradley and hold him accountable. He and the rest of the senior staff who signed off on this atrocity. They’ll have to answer for their role in this. We’ll all have to answer for it._

_Do you believe him, sweetheart?_

Riza heard Mother’s voice less, in Ishval. She savors it now. 

_You stupid girl. You’d be a fool to believe him. He deceived you once, with sweet-sounding words about joining the military to protect the people. You trusted him then, and look at the consequences._

Father’s voice is fresher in her mind than Mother’s, and Riza shudders. Father is right. And yet - she wants to believe Roy. He has the best of intentions, and she thinks he is telling the truth. (He’d had the best of intentions before, too, and she’d thought he was telling the truth.)

Riza turns her head. Looks at her rifle, resting on the floor beside her bed, with her pack. There’s one difference, though, between now and before. And that is that she can and will stop Roy, if he ever proves to be a danger to anyone again.

\- 

Sleep is elusive, in the weekend that follows. It’s not that she isn’t tired. Riza’s eyelids are heavy, and her muscles are tight from fatigue, but sleep takes hours to come. When it does, it’s punctuated by terrible dreams. Of Major Hall coming to the Academy and telling her that the Fuhrer has given her an order to exterminate her fellow cadets, and she must obey. Of Father, snapping his fingers like Roy, and burning her as punishment for revealing the secret of Flame Alchemy. _You allowed this to happen in Ishval,_ he said. _It’s only right that you suffer the same torture as the Ishvalans did._ Of wandering, lost and alone, in the blood-soaked streets of Ishval, unable to find her way back to the army outpost. Unable to ever return home. 

When Riza closes her eyes at night, she remembers the faces of the Ishvalans, seen through the scope of her rifle. She can’t even find release in tears, like she had in her tent in the desert. She’s sharing a room with three other girls again, and she doesn’t want to disturb them. That night when she awoke screaming from her nightmare of Father, with Rebecca’s hand on her arm, calling, _Riza, Riza, please wake up,_ and Rilla and Inger staring at her like she was some kind of freak - that had been bad enough.

Riza is able to get through the days, with Rebecca by her side; with textbooks of all the academic material she had missed during her time on the front lines to occupy her. But she is quickly finding that she hates nights. 

Riza slips out of the girls’ dorm room after the others are asleep, and she wanders out to the academy grounds. Once, she would have gone to the range and picked up a gun to soothe herself, but she can’t bring herself to handle a rifle again. Not yet. So she walks around the track in the dark, for lap after lap.

She misses Reid. It isn’t something that weighs on her much during the day, except for fleeting moments where she remembers the brush of his fingers through her bangs and the sound of his voice. But at night, the emptiness, the loneliness, grows to a point where it’s near intolerable. She rubs her hands over her own arms, trying to comfort herself, but it's no use.

It isn’t even the physical satisfaction that Riza misses; she’s fairly sure that she could do the same thing with her fingers as Reid had done with his. It’s the intimacy. The closeness. They had quickly gotten into the habit of spending every night together. Even when they hadn’t slept together, they _slept_ together, quite literally, curled up close, Riza’s back pressed against his chest, Reid’s arms wrapped around her. They would talk quietly, voices raspy with fatigue, distracting one another from the memories of the day and the knowledge of what lay before them tomorrow, until they fell asleep.

That had kept the worst of the nightmares at bay. That had made it a hundred times easier to fall asleep - when she had the sound of Reid’s breathing and the reassuring weight of his embrace to distract her. She’d been given the luxury of forgetting, for just a little while. The ability to go to sleep feeling loved and treasured. _Beautiful,_ Reid called her, and _sweetheart,_ sometimes (and, oh, she’d loved that, it made her blush every time). Riza had basked in the words and how they reminded her of long-ago, happier days. Memories held close and cherished, of Mother, and the way Mother talked to her and made her feel like she was something beloved and special. 

She doesn’t have that any longer. Riza goes to sleep alone, with no one to hold her or kiss her or whisper soft words to her, and she has nothing to distract her from the reality that she is a disappointment and a murderer. 

She misses being good. Feeling good.

 _Selfish,_ Riza tells herself. She picks at the skin at the base of her thumbnail until it bleeds. She doesn’t deserve to feel good or loved, after what she’s done. 

(But she still wants and hungers for it, as much as she ever has before. Even more, now that she knows what she is missing, and what she could have. She still wants.)

\- 

Riza’s first real day back at the Academy wears on her nerves. Her fellow cadets keep their distance, but she hears the whispers. She’s gone from _Hawkeye_ to _the Hawk’s Eye,_ a nickname she thought she had left behind in Ishval. 

_There were only five snipers that survived from the Daliha region, did you know that? She was one of them._

_I heard that two of the snipers from the Kandahar outpost shot themselves. And another two guys killed themselves when they got back to Western Command. Survivor’s guilt._

_Do you think she’ll--_

_She looks kind of rough, doesn’t she?_

_I heard Rilla and Inger talking; they said that she started screaming out of nowhere in the middle of the night._

_She doesn’t look happy to be back, even though all the professors are fucking fawning over her, it’s nauseating--_

_I wonder how many confirmed kills she made._

Chapman and Dobrow sit down at her and Rebecca’s table in the mess at dinner, without being invited. They ignore Rebecca’s indignant exclamation, and the blank expression on Riza’s face. Chapman leans in close. “What was it like out there?” he asks. His eyes are avid with anticipation of her answer. He sounds so eager. Like Riza had been on a pleasure trip to Creta, instead of a government-sanctioned murder spree. 

Riza’s fingers tighten around her fork. She’s struck with the sudden, uncharacteristic impulse to slam the tines into Chapman’s ear and twist. The disgust comes an instant later. How could she think that? What had Ishval done to her? 

Rebecca splashes her full glass of ice water into Chapman’s face. 

-

Things escalate quickly. Dobrow and Chapman both lunge at Rebecca, and Riza grabs Chapman by the back of his head and slams him into the table hard enough to break his nose on impact. Rebecca punches Dobrow in the eye, before hitting him across the face with her dinner tray for good measure. Naturally, the episode catches everyone’s attention, including the staff, and all four of them are escorted to their respective academic advisors at once. 

Riza has never been sent to Bresler for disciplinary action before. Last year, if she had been in this position, she would have been mortified, contrite, terrified of his displeasure and disapproval. Now, she stands in front of his work table at the range as he takes apart a Cei-Rigotti for cleaning and maintenance, and feels only a mere shadow of the fear she would have in the past. She still feels small, like a chastised child, as she explains the incident in the mess - but this pales in comparison to everything else she’s done.

Bresler shakes his head, setting the rifle down on the table. “Relax, Hawkeye. I’m not going to criticize you for what happened. I’ve been on the receiving end of idiotic questions from morons like Chapman a hundred times over, and I’ve reacted like you and Catalina more often than not.”

Riza does relax fractionally. She can imagine, with the jagged scar that mars the right side of Bresler’s face and his limp. At least she has no visible signs of Ishval, besides the pronounced shadows underneath her eyes. “I’m sorry. For what you’ve endured from others.”

“I’m sorry too. For what I’m sure you’ve had to put up with today.” Bresler makes his way to a Karabiner 98k hung on the wall. He takes it down, and then brings it to her. “Can you clean this?”

Riza hesitates before her fingers close around the rifle. She hadn’t had marksmanship or sniper training today. She hasn’t done so much as pick up her rifle since bringing it back from Ishval, not even to clean it. “Yes, sir.”

They work in silence for a few minutes, on their own weapons. Finally, Bresler clears his throat. “Anyway, it isn’t a complete waste of time, Colonel Janssen sending you over here. We should discuss your future.”

Riza’s hand slips on the gun, making it clatter to the table. She remembers what she had confided in Roy and Reid. The impulse to drop out and take her earned salary and put it toward an apartment and a postsecondary certification - but there’s no _justice_ in that, as tempting as it is, and--

“Yes?” she asks, forcing herself away from that train of thought. 

“You’re graduating in six months.” Bresler gestures toward his office. “I have four letters in there, sent to me over the past few weeks, from your commanding officer and your fellow snipers in Ishval. They all give you the highest commendations. They speak not just to your remarkable skill, but to your fortitude and strength under pressure. To the compassion and kindness you show to your fellow soldiers.”

Riza’s eyes blur with tears, unexpectedly, and she blinks them away. “They were an excellent team.”

“I shared the letters with Colonel Janssen. He agrees with my recommendation, and with theirs.” Bresler gives her a small smile. “You’ll graduate as a Second Lieutenant.”

Riza stares, utterly taken aback. She can barely stammer her thanks. It’s nearly unheard of; there have only been a few similar cases over the past several years. Even Roy had graduated as a Corporal, before taking the State Alchemist certification that had allowed him to rise in rank to Major. 

Bresler shrugs it off. “It’s well-deserved.” He finishes reassembling the Cei-Rigotti. “It also makes discussing your future plans even more important. You have two potential paths ahead of you. The highest demand for snipers are at Fort Briggs and Southern Command, what with their proximity to Drachma and Aerugo. There are always outbreaks of hostility around those border areas. Any of those conflicts could erupt into a full-blown war at any time.”

Riza can’t find the words to speak, and Bresler continues. “The advantage of Briggs is that you’d have General Armstrong as a mentor. I’m sure she’d be interested in a protégé who comes with the accomplishments you do.” 

\--and Riza remembers Major Hall’s words. _You’ll go far. You could go all the way to the top._ She’s struck with a strange desire to laugh at the bizarre thought of her and Roy competing to become Fuhrer, to be the one to take Bradley and the military leadership down. (She might trust herself more than she trusts Roy, but he’s already a Lieutenant Colonel, and a man, and the Flame Alchemist, the Hero of Ishval. He’ll always have the advantage over her in a race to the top.) 

“The advantage of Southern Command is that most of your old sniper team is already posted there, and you’re even more likely to see combat than you would be at Briggs.”

Riza forces herself to nod. Her head and heart are starting to pound at the mere thought of being at war again. It’ll start with orders to target Drachman and Aerugan enemy combatants. Reasonable orders. Orders any soldier would obey. But then it will escalate, spiraling more and more out of control, until it ends with civilians being executed in their homes and children lying dead on the side of the road. 

“Yes, sir.” The words come out automatically. 

“Do you have a preference?” Bresler presses. “I would recommend Briggs, but ultimately, it’s up to you.” 

Riza takes a deep breath. Steels herself. “I’d like to request East City Command.”

“East City?” Bresler repeats, nonplussed. “Under the command of Lieutenant General Grumman? I know it’s been considered one of the best offensive forces during the years of the Ishvalan conflict, but with the cessation of hostilities in Ishval, it’s unlikely that you’ll see combat there.” 

“Yes, sir.” It isn’t Grumman that she wants to work under. Riza wavers, imagining Bresler’s reaction, his anger and disapproval. She’ll be letting him down, disappointing him, just like she had with Father. 

Riza would have quailed from that once, been unable to face it, but she can’t do that now. Despite how hard it is to make a stand, she has to. If she doesn’t, she’ll end up in the same position she had been in Ishval, with a dozen regrets. More promotions and more accolades aren’t worth having to kill another hundred people. “Additionally, I know it’s late in my path in the Academy, but I would also like to add administration and support to my career track.”

Bresler studies her, an unreadable expression on his face. Riza tries not to tremble under his gaze. He crosses his arms over his chest. “This is because of Ishval, isn’t it?”

His voice is hard, and cold fingers of dread tighten around her neck. “It is.” Riza stumbles on the words. “I’m so sorry. I know that after all the training that you’ve invested in me, this must be a disappointment.”

Bresler sighs again, and uncrosses his arms and steps toward her. Riza resists the impulse to shrink back, standing her ground. 

“I’m not disappointed in you, Hawkeye.” His tone is low, emphatic. He reaches out, like he’s about to put a hand on her shoulder, but he rests it on the Karabiner 98k instead. She can see the strain on his face. “I’m disappointed in myself, for agreeing to send you there. I thought it was going to be a normal war, like every other conflict Amestris has been involved in. I had no idea what they would ask of you. When I heard about 3066, and what was happening to snipers at all of the Ishvalan outposts--” 

Riza shuts her eyes, pained. Her breath stutters in her chest. Bresler stops abruptly. She opens her eyes, and he’s staring at her, looking torn. (It’s a familiar expression; Reid had looked at her like that sometimes.) 

“I’m not disappointed in you,” he repeats, and the words are a balm, soothing and almost gentle. “I’m glad you’re alive.”

 _I’m not disappointed in you._ She’s heard that from Bresler, and from Reid, after she had spared the mother and daughter in Ishval and pleaded with him to let them escape, too. The words are so kind, such a relief, such a weight off her shoulders. An ephemeral respite from the crushing knowledge that she had disappointed Father in the one task he had entrusted her with, and from the fact that she’s disappointed herself, and probably Mother too. Riza bites back a sob, and she nods. 

Bresler lingers near her, looking a little uncertain, a little uncomfortable at both of their displays of emotion. “Yes, you could go far at Fort Briggs or Southern Command,” he says tersely. “But you rising to Captain or Major won’t mean anything to me, to either of us, if you put a bullet through your head after the next time you see combat. I’ll send a letter to Grumman’s office in East City tomorrow, and I’ll update your schedule to reflect your dual career track. It’ll be ready for you to pick up tomorrow morning at seven-hundred hours.” 

“Thank you.” Riza struggles to maintain her composure. “Thank you so much.” 

Bresler rests a hand on her shoulder for just an instant before withdrawing, heading back to his office. “Try and get some rest, Hawkeye.”

Her shoulder tingles where he had touched it. The warmth lingers. Riza reaches up, almost unconsciously, and rubs her shoulder. “Yes, sir.”

-

Her final semester at the Academy is a grind, between the dual career tracks, the long nights, the lack of sleep, and the persistent nightmares. Riza walks countless laps around the track at night, in the dark. Alone, but not alone. Sometimes she glances over her shoulder, feeling the ghosts at her back. Her father. Her mother. Every Ishvalan she had shot. Every Ishvalan who had perished in Roy's flames. 

Lieutenant General Grumman writes back to Colonel Janssen and to Bresler, letting them know that East City Command would be “honored” to have the Hawk’s Eye among their new recruits. Three months before graduation, Rebecca lands a spot at East City Command as well, on Grumman’s staff. 

“There’s an open Second Lieutenant position in Grumman’s office, Riza,” Rebecca informs her. “You should apply for it. We’d have a lot of fun together - I’ve heard that Grumman is _super_ weird, and not at all strict with his team.”

Riza is gentle but firm in her refusal. “Who are you going to serve with, then?” Rebecca eyes her curiously. “Be careful that you don’t end up on Colonel Jurich’s unit. Dad says that he’s a real creep.” 

“I won’t.” Riza pauses, and proceeds with caution. “I’m going to request the office of Lieutenant Colonel Roy Mustang.”

“The Flame Alchemist?” Rebecca’s brows rise, and she mulls it over. She says nothing further on the topic for the rest of breakfast. 

-

Riza is studying in the library after dinner, bent over her textbook on communications and surveillance, when a newspaper lands on the table beside her. 

The paper is dated from a few months ago. It features a front page story on the “cessation of conflict in Ishval,” thanks to the State Alchemists of Amestris. And one in particular. One of note. 

Riza swallows, as she looks from the picture of Roy in full dress uniform, to Rebecca. Rebecca doesn’t say a word. She just gives her a very significant look, a look that says _you’ve been found out,_ and Riza sighs and puts her head in her hands. 

-

Riza’s stomach roils with uneasiness whenever she works with a sniper rifle on the range. She can’t look through the scope without expecting to see an Ishvalan civilian in the crosshairs. She finds that handguns don’t trigger the same visceral response in her body and mind - a small mercy. Maybe one day, years from now, she’ll be able to handle a sniper rifle with ease again, but for now, she sticks to handguns whenever possible. 

Riza practices at night, to test her accuracy without the advantage given by the illumination of a sniper rifle scope in night mode. She tests her proficiency with one gun in each hand. Bresler comes out and keeps her company, sometimes, correcting her form. She’s used to handling a sniper rifle; the much lighter weight and much smaller size of handguns affect her movements. She would have chafed at her mistakes, once. Now, Riza can’t bring herself to mind them, as Bresler taps at her shoulder and arm to adjust her form. 

Sometimes, on nights like tonight, his touch lingers a half second too long. Sometimes, on nights like tonight, she wonders--

(Riza had never given much thought to her physical appearance before. She had never thought of herself as beautiful, like Mother had been, with her long, silken blonde hair and warm smile and amber eyes. Riza had looked into the mirror when she was sixteen and dismissed her own eyes as plain and too intense, her features as nothing special. Later, after enlisting, she had found her curves nothing more than a nuisance that made running more difficult and made her back hurt sometimes. 

It hadn’t been until Ishval, until Reid, that she’d started to consider herself and her body in a different light, even with the tattoo marring her back. _Your eyes,_ Reid said to her once, late at night, brushing the backs of his fingers down her cheekbone, and Riza leaned into his touch. _A man could drown in those eyes._ )

Riza looks up and over her shoulder at Bresler.

-

Riza returns to the girls’ dorm late. She slides under the covers, nestling her head against the pillow, and wraps her arms around herself, remembering the comfort of touch. 

Remembering, _you’re not a bad person, Hawkeye,_ breathed against her skin. She’d rested her forehead against his collarbone just before and confessed what she hadn’t even been able to confess to her best friend. _I feel bad all the time. I feel - tainted, compared to Rebecca._

Riza holds his reply close, as tightly as she had gripped her rifle, once. _You’re not a bad person, Hawkeye._

_It was my fault._

_It wasn’t._ Bresler’s fingers came to rest underneath her chin, gently tipping her head back, and she’d seen the sincerity in his hazel eyes.

Riza falls asleep within minutes, for the first night since returning from Ishval.

-

One month before graduation, Rebecca asks her if she wants to share an apartment in East City. 

Riza imagines a home that is small and warm and cozy and actually feels like home, where she and Rebecca can blast the jazz station on the radio in the mornings while getting ready for work, and share late-night snacks after late nights in the office, and eat dinner together on the sofa. And her first instinct is to say _yes._

Then Riza remembers the coping mechanism she had learned in Ishval and again this semester. The one that Rebecca doesn’t know about, because it’s too embarrassing to talk about. The one thing that makes her forget being a girl and young woman starved for touch and attention and affection and approval. The one thing that makes her forget Ishval, and forget that she’s a disappointment. 

“I’m sorry, Becca, but I don’t think I should,” Riza tells her. She looks away, back to the clothes that she is packing. “I don’t want to bother you with my nightmares. It’s better that I’m not near anyone else at night.” 

-

Riza and Rebecca graduate from the Academy with the highest of honors, spend a week living like princesses at the Catalina home with Rebecca’s family, and move into their apartments in East City on the first day of July. Their apartments are a block away from one another, and equally tiny. 

Riza’s meeting with Roy - Lieutenant Colonel Mustang, she reminds herself - is at nine-hundred hours on her first day at East City Command. She stops outside of the double doors to his office, centers herself, and knocks twice. Then she enters.

Roy’s office is large and imposing enough that he looks strangely small, sitting behind the sturdy wooden desk. It’s a far cry from the old kitchen table in Hawkeye Manor where they both used to study. Riza approaches, stands at attention, and salutes, like she does for all of her superior officers. 

It’s strange to do that with Roy, when part of her still remembers the teenager who used his alchemy to help her with her household chores, and the young man who had comforted her after her father’s death. Who had studied the Flame Alchemy runes off of her bare back, and brought her toast with strawberry preserves and tea to keep her comfortable while he worked. 

Roy is paler than he had been in Ishval, his complexion and the shadows under his eyes telling the story of long hours spent indoors and not enough spent asleep. He steeples his fingers together and regards her with some curiosity. “So, you’ve decided to take this path after all. Even after what you went through in Ishval.”

He sounds a little surprised, and Riza supposes it makes sense. The last time they had seen one another, she had confided her temptation to quit the military entirely. “Yes, sir.” 

Strangely, she remembers her father, and the alchemy lessons he had given her long ago. Father used to prompt her for explanations in much the same way. She hadn’t been able to learn his lessons to the extent he had wanted, but she had still been able to grasp some of the knowledge that he had held so dearly. The principles, at least. The theory. 

“If the world truly operates on the principles of equivalent exchange, then we as soldiers have plenty to give back.” Riza hasn’t spoken about equivalent exchange aloud in almost fourteen years. The words come out steady and calm nevertheless. If Roy is startled to hear her quoting alchemical theory at him, he doesn’t show it. 

She tells Roy part of the truth. That she - that all of them - have a responsibility to the dead. 

Riza doesn’t tell him the rest. That the only way to keep the Flame Alchemist she had created from being in a position to hurt others again is to shoot him down if he ever proves to be a danger. And she can’t do that as a civilian.

Roy listens to her attentively, and it isn’t the first time Riza has had the uncanny feeling that he has understood exactly what she hasn’t said. He stands, facing her. “From now on, I’m assigning you to be my assistant. I feel like I can trust you to watch my back.”

She hadn’t expected that. 

“Although I expect that you understand what this means,” Roy continues. “You’ll be able to shoot me in the back as well, if I ever deviate from this path. I’m trusting you to do so. Do you accept my offer?”

Riza exhales, and knows a moment of mingled relief and astonishment that they have understood one another so well. It’s like Roy has spent as much time thinking about this - about the responsibilities that they both carry - as she has. 

“Of course I do, sir,” Riza says. Briefly, she imagines where their paths might take them. With Roy as the Fuhrer and Bradley in prison, hopefully. It’s more likely that their paths will end with both of them shot for treason. And yet, she has no regrets or reservations about the choice she has just made. “I’ll follow you into hell, if you ask me to.” 

-

Riza meets the other members of Roy’s unit on her first day. Second Lieutenant Heymans Breda, Second Lieutenant Jean Havoc, and Warrant Officer Vato Falman. They have all been part of the team for five months or so, making her the newcomer. 

Riza remembers a time she would have been wary about meeting new people. That had been before Ishval, before Sniper Team Seven. If there had been one single good thing that had come out of those dark and terrible months, it had been learning - for the first time, really - how to be a part of a team. How to see others as people to connect to, potential sources of warmth and kindness and acceptance. Not people to be feared, and not rivals for the regard and attention of professors and commanding officers. 

Sniper Team Seven got her through hell. They became a little like a family. Riza wonders what her new unit will become to her, in the months and years to come. 

Roy takes them all out to lunch at the café down the street rather than at the mess hall in the basement of East City Command, claiming that today is a special occasion that merits celebration. Riza sits at his right side and meets Breda, Havoc, and Falman’s curious stares.

“Second Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye, huh?” Havoc takes a sip of his soda, regarding her thoughtfully. “I’ve heard a lot about you. Is it true--” 

He stops mid-sentence to take an enormous, and messy, bite of his sandwich. Breda shakes his head in disapproval, Falman passes Havoc a napkin, Roy rolls his eyes skyward, and Riza’s shoulders tense as she prepares for a question about Ishval. She should have expected it. And she has to conduct herself better than she had last time someone had asked her an unexpected question about her time on the front lines. 

“--That you’re unbeatable at cutthroat?” Havoc asks, with his mouth full. 

Roy, Breda, and Falman look at her, startled. Evidently, they hadn’t expected the question either. Riza blinks. “Do you know Rebecca Catalina?”

Havoc grins. “I met her when I was on General Lee’s staff over in Central, before I was transferred to East, and while she was doing her internship. Our whole office would go out to play pool on Friday nights.”

“And yet, despite the weekly practice, you’re still terrible at it,” Breda mumbles. 

Havoc shoots him a dirty look. “Rebecca would beat us every time - _all_ of us, Breda - and she said that she still wasn’t as good as her best friend.” 

Riza can’t help but laugh. Roy glances at her, as if surprised, and she realizes that he may never have heard her laugh before. “Rebecca’s too kind. She’s just as good as me.”

“You picked well, Lieutenant Colonel.” Falman smiles. “Now the rest of us have a chance against Breda.”

Roy grins. The expression brightens his face, softening the lines of strain around his eyes, making him look his age. Just four years older than her, just twenty-three. “You got me, Falman. That’s exactly why I chose Hawkeye to be a member of this unit.”

“Friday night, nineteen-hundred hours, at the Molten Rose,” Breda challenges, looking around the table. “Who’s in?” 

“In,” Roy, Havoc, and Falman chorus, and Riza smiles as she echoes her assent.

-

Riza’s first weeks on the Lieutenant Colonel’s staff pass quickly. Roy provides her with an orientation to the massive quantity of administrative and field work that he is responsible for, and Riza quickly learns that he is as enthusiastic about field work as he is sluggish about the administrative responsibilities associated with his rank. He jumps at every opportunity to get out of the office and into the field alongside Breda and Havoc. He’s equally eager to include himself in meetings with other senior officers at East City Command (and visiting officers from Central Command, and Southern Command, and Western Command, and Fort Briggs), leaving Riza scrambling to adjust his schedule on a daily, sometimes twice-daily basis. All while his regular paperwork piles up to alarming heights in his inbox. 

As the Lieutenant Colonel’s new assistant, Riza finds this concerning.

She learns about Roy’s management style, as well. His unit is quite close-knit, as much as Sniper Team Seven had been. Unusual, for any unit outside of the unique environment of the front lines. Roy organizes the unit to help Breda move into his new apartment. He lifts weights with Havoc after work twice a week. One afternoon, Riza walks in on him giving Falman advice on how to deal with a troublesome neighbor. ( _You have to show no fear, Falman,_ Roy lectured, and Falman looked alarmed at the prospect.) 

She asks him about it one evening when they’re both working late, eating dinner in the nearly-deserted mess hall. “You treat your unit more like friends than subordinates, Lieutenant Colonel,” Riza observes, taking a sip of her herbal tea. “It reminds me of my commanding officer in Ishval.”

“Remind me who that was?” And Riza knows that Roy will file the information away in his mind, adding it to his ever-growing list of potential future allies.

“Major Julian Hall, at West City Command.”

“Interesting. Thank you, Hawkeye.” Roy glances at the planning journal resting beside her, and the calendar laid out within the pages. “You’ve been on the unit for a few months now. What do you think about the team?”

“They’re good men,” Riza replies, honestly and without hesitation. She remembers conversations with Breda as they both read the newspaper over breakfast in the morning, and friendly competitions at the range with Havoc, and learning quite by accident that she and Falman both enjoy several of the same thriller authors. “Principled, loyal, honest, kind, and clever.” 

“The best in East City Command.” His voice warms with pride, and Riza likes the way it sounds, as much as she likes the sound of his laugh. “I hand-picked them myself, you know, for the traits that you mentioned. Certainly a cut above what most of the military has to offer, don’t you agree?”

Riza remembers her fellow cadets at the Academy; the soldiers outside of her team in Ishval. “I do.”

“I’ve only been in the army a couple of years longer than you have, but I’ve noticed…” Roy hesitates. “I’ve noticed that good men don’t tend to stay in for long. They serve their four years and resign their commissions.”

“My advisor at the Academy mentioned that once.” Riza glances around cautiously, and lowers her voice further. “I heard that there was an epidemic of resignations after Order 3066 went through.”

“Exactly.” There’s a hint of bitterness in Roy’s tone, and it seems to take him an effort to smile. “It’s hard to find good men - and women - in the line of work we’re in. When you do, it’s something to be treasured.”

Riza thinks of Falman, Breda, and Havoc, of how they had welcomed her into the fold, as graciously and easily as if she had always been one of them. They don’t treat her as less, because of her gender. They have never asked her about Ishval. She looks across the table at Roy, who drives her home after work on late nights, and who has kept the small kitchenette adjacent to their office stocked with boxes of her favorite tea ever since her first week. Which isn’t her favorite tea anymore, but had been when she was a girl of thirteen living in Hawkeye Manor; how is it that he _remembered--_

Roy, who has spoken to her quietly, on nights like this, about his political plans for the future. He hasn’t abandoned the idea he’d discussed with her in Ishval. If anything, in the intervening months, his commitment has only grown. 

“Yes,” Riza agrees quietly. “It is.” 

-

The weeks go on, and Roy doesn’t bring it up. Based on his reaction when she had made the request of him, back in Ishval, Riza doesn’t expect him to. She knows that she’ll be the one to ask again. Every day, she tells herself, _today is the day._

But she keeps finding excuses to put it off - telling herself that they don’t have enough time alone today to have that conversation. Or that the Lieutenant Colonel seems exhausted or stressed today, so maybe it can wait for tomorrow. Or that they need to focus on their current operation today, without being distracted by other matters. Or that the upcoming weeks will be busy, much too busy for her to take medical leave for who knows how long, or--

The truth is, Riza is afraid. 

She’s had nightmares of her father using his Flame Alchemy against her as punishment ever since returning from Ishval. She’s had nightmares of being back in Ishval and being mistakenly caught in the path of Roy’s vicious attacks, and watching her own skin crisp and char underneath the flames. Riza wakes up paralyzed with terror every time, a scream lodged in her throat. 

This is the suffering that so many Ishvalans went through. It hadn’t been a nightmare, for them. It had been their reality. 

Still, sometimes Riza catches herself thinking - _maybe you don’t have to do it._ Maybe it’s enough to remember that she can never show her back to another alchemist again, for as long as she lives. 

Riza knows that is a coward’s line of thinking. On a rational level, she knows that it isn’t enough. In a worst-case scenario, the choice to reveal her back may not be hers. 

She looks at herself in the mirror of the women’s bathroom at East City Command. _You don’t get to be afraid,_ she tells herself. _The decision that you made condemned a thousand Ishvalans to death by fire. So you don’t get to be afraid._

Riza returns to the office. It’s nineteen-hundred hours and she and Roy are the only members of the unit left at this hour. She walks into Roy’s office and deposits an armful of paperwork onto his desk. “Here are the requisition orders you need to sign off on, Lieutenant Colonel.” 

“Thanks, Hawkeye.” Roy signs the report in front of him. “I’m almost done with this.”

“There’s another thing.”

Her tone alerts him that something is amiss, and he looks up at her sharply. “What is it?”

Riza refuses to let herself hesitate. “My back.” The words come out clipped and curt. “When can you assist me with my situation?”

Roy sets down the report in his hands, and Riza notices the subtle tremor that passes through them. “Sit down.”

She does, meeting his gaze unflinchingly. Roy folds his arms in front of him, and the concern is written clear on his face. “Are you sure about this?”

“Yes, sir.”

Roy looks at her for a long moment before turning away, staring out of the darkened window. “I’m not going to lie to you. I have serious reservations.”

“Because of my health?” It’s something that Riza has been afraid of, too - the possibility of lasting injury, trauma to the muscle and bone of her back, even to her spine. The possibility of healing not going smoothly, twisting the muscle and warping the skin. 

But she’s not allowed to be afraid of that. Not after what she had done. The Ishvalans had suffered much worse than lasting injury and scars. 

“Yes.” Roy’s shoulders tense. “And because you’re my subordinate. I’m the one who’s supposed to protect you, not--” He stops. Glances at her out of the corner of his eye. He looks ashamed, and sad, like he had in Ishval. 

Riza stands, making up her mind. “I can do it myself, then.”

“What?” Roy swivels back toward her, alarmed. 

“I’ll go out in the woods and build a campfire, and…” Riza shrugs, brutally suppressing the fright rising inside her. “I’ll put my back to it and lean in.”

“Are you out of your mind?” Roy snaps. He’s never raised his voice to her before, never spoken to her harshly. Riza freezes with fear, an instinctive response that hasn’t been triggered in her for months, not since moving to East City and working with her unit. “I’m not going to let you do this alone. You want to burn yourself, blind, like that? You could kill yourself.”

“I--” Riza’s calm falters, revealing some of the anxiety that has eaten at her all day, all week. What would Father think of her destroying his research like this? “I don’t have a choice.”

“I won’t let you do this alone, Hawkeye.” Roy stands up, a quick motion that pushes his chair back from his desk. “I made you a promise. I intend to honor it.”

It is a small measure of relief, to know that there will be someone by her side. (That Roy will be by her side). Riza nods. “Thank you.”

-

Riza cancels her plans with Rebecca for Friday evening. She spends the hours after work on Friday in an anxious haze, cleaning her apartment to spotless perfection, cooking enough food to last a few days. She doesn’t know when she will be mobile enough to do all of these things again. She takes a shower, and she normally likes warm showers, but thinking of what is ahead makes her tremble when the warm water hits her skin. She turns the knob to its coldest setting.

Roy comes over after dark. He’s dressed in civilian clothing, and he carries a thick medical textbook underneath his arm. Riza’s stomach lurches at the sight of it. He pulls out a roll of bandages, an amber-colored bottle of impossibly large pills, and a jar of ointment from the pockets of his dark overcoat, before shrugging it off. 

“Thank you for coming, Lieutenant Colonel.” As if he’s a guest at a dinner party for the unit that she’s throwing. Riza takes his coat from him and hangs it on the rack. It’s a little odd, a little incongruous, to see him here in her apartment. It’s been three years since Roy has stood in her living space. It feels like an eternity. “Have you eaten yet?”

Roy shakes his head. He glances around her small apartment, appearing as ill at ease as she feels. “I’m fine.”

“Where do you want to…” Riza trails off, awkwardly reminded of the fact that she normally asks men this question in a very different context. 

“The bedroom would be best.” 

Riza leads him to her room, trying her best to ignore the strangeness of this. Her heartbeat is starting to quicken, despite her best efforts to remain calm. She leans against the wall, a little lightheaded, as she watches Roy settle his supplies on her small bedside table. She has an old framed photograph of Mother there, one that she found in a drawer of Father’s study while she was clearing Hawkeye Manor out after his death. Roy notices the photograph, and looks between it and her.

“My mother,” Riza explains. Even after this long, fourteen long years, her voice nearly breaks on the last word. 

“I thought so. You look just like her.”

She nods, not trusting herself to say anything further, and approaches the bed. “Should I lie down?”

“I think that will be most comfortable for you.” Roy pauses, and then looks away, as if unable to face her. “Put your face into the pillows, if it doesn’t impede your breathing. It’ll be helpful to muffle the…”

 _Screaming,_ Riza finishes mentally, and she struggles to quell the nausea surging inside her. She removes her dark undershirt, and then her bra. She folds both, and places her discarded shirt over her bra, hiding it from view. It’s modest for someone who has done what she has (someone who has fucked her academic advisor up against the wall of his office and on his desk, just for the sake of being touched and wanting to please; wanting to be held and comforted for an hour), someone who does what she does one or two weekends a month (find a bar as far away as possible from East City Command, and look for a man who looks as broken as she feels, someone who will kiss her brow and her cheeks and say sweet things to her). But this is her commanding officer in the room with her, it’s _Roy_ , and it’s different. 

Riza settles herself facedown on the bed, ignoring the tears pricking against the backs of her eyes. “Okay,” she manages. “I’m ready.”

The bedsprings squeak as Roy sits beside her, looking down at her back. “I’m only going to burn parts of it,” he says abruptly. 

Riza almost sits up, almost turns to face him. “What?” 

“I’m afraid I’ll hurt you too badly if I burn your entire back. Can I--” 

She nods, and Roy touches her gently, pressing his palm against her left shoulder blade. He trails his fingertips over a part of her right shoulder blade, and then in a diagonal line across the middle of her back, and Riza tries not to tremble at the warmth of his palm against her skin. It reminds her so powerfully of the fantasy she’d had, as a sixteen-year-old letting him study the runes off her back, that she nearly cries. She had wanted Roy to touch her, to stroke his fingers along her skin, but not like this. Not like this.

“These sections right here are crucial parts of the array,” he explains. “If I just obscure these sections, the rest will be incoherent. Completely useless to anyone who looks at it.” 

“Okay.” Riza’s throat is tight. It hurts to speak.

Roy places one hand on her right shoulder blade, to brace himself. 

It’s too much. Something inside her breaks, snaps clean in half. Her position, lying facedown, half-naked and vulnerable, the weight of a man’s hand on her back (a man she trusts), pressing her down into the mattress, his other hand poised above her, the knowledge and the fear of the pain ahead. She’s fourteen again, fourteen and scared but desperate to do this to please her father, unaware that she isn’t worthy of the responsibility he’s placing on her, unaware that she will fail him and let him down after all, and--

Riza starts to cry.

“Hawkeye?” Roy pulls back at once. She hasn’t heard him sound so alarmed in a long time. "What’s wrong? What is it?”

“Nothing. Nothing’s wrong. It just reminded me of--” Riza bites the inside of her cheek, forcing herself to keep silent. She’s never told the truth about her tattoo to anybody. Not Rebecca, not Reid, not Bresler, not any of the others. Roy doesn’t need to know about that terrifying day in Father’s bedroom, either. About her pain and fright and how she’d soaked the pillowcase beneath her face with tears and sweat. 

But she had said enough. Roy hovers by her side, trying to provide comfort without touching her. “I’m so sorry, Hawkeye. I’m sorry that he did this to you.”

The words almost trigger a fresh burst of tears. Riza grits her teeth to hold them back. “I never want to be in this position again. I won’t be.” She looks over her shoulder at him. He’s clearly shaken. “Do it. Please.”

“Are you sure?”

Riza takes a deep breath, and presses her face back against the pillows. “Yes.”

She prepares herself for the weight of Roy’s hand on her back, this time, but she still tenses up when it comes. She doesn’t cry again. She prepares herself for the pain.

It is a thousand times worse than the tattooing had been. Riza cries out, trying to curl up like an injured animal, Roy holding her still. Every muscle and nerve and fiber in her body demands that she try to fight him off, that she beg for him to stop. She clamps her mouth shut, and remembers Ishval, the people and buildings and encampments erupting in flames. _You deserve this,_ Riza thinks, as blackness creeps into her vision. _You deserve this, you deserve this, you deserve this--_

“Just once more, Riza.” Roy sounds like he’s about to cry. “I’m almost done. Just once more.”

She’s in so much pain she’s nearly beyond rational thought. She can’t help but think of Father. _Why did you create this? Why would you spend years, decades, working on something so terrible and destructive, why was_ this _more important than me--_

Roy snaps his fingers again, and the agony sends Riza over the edge.

-

It is dark when Riza wakes up. Her eyes are leaden and gritty, her lips chapped. The pillowcase beneath her is damp, and her back feels raw underneath the bandages, as if the skin had been flayed off. She’s still topless, face down in bed, but her blanket is resting over her, covering her from the shoulders down.

The only illumination comes from the hallway light, which had been left on. Roy had dragged one of the kitchen chairs over to the side of her bed. He’s slumped in the chair, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, the top button of his shirt undone, looking absolutely haggard with exhaustion and stress. He sits up straight as soon as he notices that she’s awake. 

“You’re up,” Roy says, reaching over to her lamp so quickly that he knocks over the bottle of pills sitting on her bedside table. He flicks the switch on, and Riza shies away from the light. “Thank God.”

He sounds almost lightheaded with relief, but the words are incongruous, coming from him. She’s heard him and Breda debating the existence of a higher power, after a few drinks at the Molten Rose. _If there is a god at all - if_ \- Roy asserted, and she looked into his eyes and knew exactly what he was thinking, exactly what he was remembering, _it isn’t kind and it isn’t merciful._

“What?” She had meant to ask _what happened,_ but her voice gives out after the first word.

“You fainted. I was worried that you were in shock.” Roy leans in, and even in her condition, something inside her jolts at the proximity. They’re close enough that she could count his eyelashes, if she wanted to. Riza realizes he’s looking into her eyes, checking her pupils. “How do you feel?”

“Awful.” The word escapes with uncharacteristic bluntness, without any of her customary tact. Roy barks a bitter laugh. He apologizes, clearly appalled at himself, and she shakes her head with some difficulty. “It’s fine.” It had actually been a little nice to hear him laugh. He’s been withdrawn and preoccupied all week at work. 

“Can I check your pulse? Just with my finger at your neck,” Roy adds quickly. “I don’t have a stethoscope or anything.”

Riza nods. Her neck is stiff after being in this position for so long, but she can’t imagine moving to get dressed right now, moving to pull a shirt over her head. Roy nudges the blanket out of the way, just an inch, and places two fingers to the side of her neck, listening intently. They stay like that for a few heartbeats, and Riza is struck by the peculiar intimacy of it. Finally, the smallest smile touches his lips. “Steady and strong,” he tells her, as he pulls back. “Much better than it was earlier.”

Riza is unprepared for the relief that courses through her. As much as she thought she deserved to die, or be crippled, she hadn’t really _wanted_ it to happen. Not like she had wanted to die in Ishval. Maybe that is progress. “Thank you for doing this.”

To her surprise, Roy places his hand on hers, gripping it tightly. He looks at her as if searching for the right words. “You’ll heal, Hawkeye. In time. You’ll be alright.” 

He is referring to the burns on her back, but Riza thinks of Ishval, of Hawkeye Manor. Of the sad and lonely and desperate child she had been, and how that girl still haunts her now. She can’t imagine ever not carrying that little girl with her.

“Yes,” Riza says, and she closes her eyes. “I hope so.”

* * *

_to be continued_   
**  
**

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you so much to everyone who has taken the time to leave comments and kudos. It really does mean a lot to me. Writing and sharing this story has been such a special experience in part because of your feedback.
> 
> Writing this chapter low key broke my heart. I hope it's not too much of a spoiler to say that happier days are ahead for Riza as she continues to make progress, though there is struggle ahead as well - this story will take us through the end of fmab. 
> 
> I would love to hear what you thought. Additionally, I am on tumblr @lantur if you would like to connect. :)


	5. five

Riza spends the next week on medical leave, claiming a case of bronchitis. She reads more than she has in a year, working her way through a novel borrowed from Falman earlier in the month. Rebecca stops by to drop off a care package consisting of two enormous jars of chicken noodle soup and a pack of chocolate pudding cups. 

Roy visits every night during the week to check on her healing, and apply a powerful salve to the burns on her back. He shares anecdotes from the office while he does this, telling her in a light tone about how his meetings this week have been, and how he’s trying to stay on top of his paperwork for her sake. He tells her about Havoc’s latest incident of hubris while weightlifting, resulting in a pulled muscle in his shoulder. He shares the story of Breda’s recent tryout for a men’s ice hockey team, and of Falman’s foray into vegetarianism.

His stories do exactly what Riza suspects they are intended to do. They distract her from the worst of the pain, both physical and mental. She doesn’t think of Father and the tattooing as Roy touches her back, rubbing the salve into her damaged skin. Riza closes her eyes tight and thinks of Rebecca and her unit instead. And of Roy. 

-

One week passes, and Riza’s back is a mess of violent blisters underneath a layer of bandages. She has no difficulty walking, but it still hurts to place her back right up against anything (the backs of chairs, her bed). Her movements when drawing the guns holstered at her shoulder and thigh aren’t as quick and smooth as they should be. 

Riza meets Rebecca outside of her apartment to walk to work together on her first day back. She grits her teeth against a cry of discomfort and does her best not to flinch when Rebecca greets her with a hug. 

She walks into the office - a modest, nondescript space, just like all of the staff offices given to other Colonels and Generals at East City Command. The paint is peeling in places, the heater works only intermittently, and the faint smell of cigarette smoke lingers in the air. Not even due to Havoc, but to Roy’s predecessor in this space, Colonel Ramsey, who had smoked a pack a day, apparently. All of it indoors. 

And yet, Riza steps inside and she’s struck with an indescribable sensation of familiarity and comfort and homecoming; the realization that she had missed this place more than she could say. Breda slouches at his desk behind a copy of the  _ East City Times _ , Havoc writes a report with obvious unenthusiasm, and Falman is checking voice messages on the phone with considerably more good cheer. 

Breda lifts a hand in greeting when she enters. “I left a copy at your desk, Hawkeye. Check out the letter to the editor written by Collins. I think you’ll find it interesting.”

“She lives!” Havoc cries, in the manner of a narrator of the overwrought horror dramas that play on the radio every autumn. “She returns!” He dodges the crumpled-up receipt that Breda tosses at him. 

Falman salutes her. “Welcome back, Hawkeye! I kept the Lieutenant Colonel on target with all of his paperwork, as you requested.”

They are all so happy to see her. Riza smiles, and she fights the sudden urge to go around and embrace them all in turn. “Thanks, Breda. And thank you so much, Falman. I was worried that I’d come back and he’d be hopelessly behind on everything.”

“What about me?” Havoc pouts. “That was good. Haven’t you ever listened to Frankenstein, Hawkeye?” 

“Rebecca and I saw it at the theatre in Central, actually.” Riza shrugs off her coat gingerly and hangs it on the rack. Everyone is in the office except Roy, which is par for the course. He always comes sauntering in between thirty to forty-five minutes late, holding a cup of coffee. “Has anybody ever told you that you could have worked in the dramatic arts?”

Havoc straightens his collar, looking rather smug. “Well, when I first met Celine, she  _ did  _ ask me if I was a movie star…” 

Riza makes her way to her desk, as Breda groans loudly in an attempt to discourage Havoc from recounting the story for the tenth time. There is a package sitting on her desk beside the copy of the  _ East City Times  _ Breda had left for her. It’s a box of tea, a gift card to the bakery a couple of blocks away, and a brand-new mystery novel, the latest in the long-running series following the adventures of Detective Cora Majeski. There’s a get-well card with an illustration of a sleeping dog on the front, propped on top of the book. 

Riza opens it, knowing what she will see. Her eyes still fill with tears when she takes in the signatures and short messages of all of the members of her unit. (And, bafflingly, a doodle of a dog, drawn by Roy, adjacent to his message.) She holds the card in front of her until she has regained her composure, and then sets it down. “Thank you,” she says. To her gratitude, her voice remains steady. “Chocolate croissants for everybody after work today?”

“You’re  _ the best _ ,” Havoc says, with feeling. 

“Please let me know what you think of the book.” Falman sets his paperwork down, and then stretches. “Advance reviews indicate that this is the best one in the series yet.”

Breda coughs to conceal a laugh. “Did you see the drawing?” 

“Yes.” Riza props the card up at the top of her desk, so that she will be able to see it every morning. It is the first personal touch she has added to her workspace. “Which one of you bet the Lieutenant Colonel that he couldn’t draw something that was recognizable as a dog?”

Havoc is about to reply when he’s interrupted by a brisk knock on the office door. He rises and opens it, looking curiously at the rest of the unit as he does so - Roy wouldn’t knock. 

Rebecca steps in, dressed in her uniform, hair tamed into a low ponytail. “Morning, all,” she greets. She’s joined them on evenings out often enough over the past months that everyone on the unit knows her, but she’s not as quick to smile this morning as she usually is. 

“Becca?” Riza asks, surprised enough that she forgets the formality that she typically likes to abide by at work. Lieutenant General Grumman sends couriers from his office to theirs several times a day to drop off paperwork and assignments, but Rebecca isn’t holding anything in her hands. 

Rebecca looks at her. “Grumman asked me to come find you, Riza. Apparently he wants to meet with you for the next half hour or so.” She frowns. “He didn’t say why, even when I asked.”

“Me?” Riza repeats, taken aback. Unease makes her shoulders stiffen. She can’t possibly be in trouble. She had filed her request for medical leave appropriately with Roy. And Roy had shown her the quarterly performance review he had filled out for her; it had been absolutely glowing. 

Her unit appears just as uncertain about this development. Falman stands. “I can come with you.”

Rebecca shakes her head. “Grumman asked for her to come alone. I think he thought Mustang would want to come with her.” 

“He would, absolutely, but he’s not in yet.” Breda’s frown deepens as he glances at the clock.

“That’s not necessary.” Riza speaks with confidence she doesn’t feel. “I’ll be back in thirty minutes or so. Please pass that on to the Lieutenant Colonel when he arrives, and apologize for my absence.” 

She joins Rebecca. “It’ll be okay, Hawkeye,” she hears Havoc call, as the door closes behind them.

The two of them stare at each other for a moment. “What…?” Riza starts.

“I have no idea.” Rebecca looks as apprehensive as she feels. “I mean, he really doesn’t seem mad or anything.”

“Oh, no.” Riza’s chest grows tight with anxiety. “He may want to transfer me to Southern Command or Briggs, if they need a sniper there.”

Rebecca places a calming hand on her arm. “There hasn’t been any sort of outbreak of conflict on the borders, and you haven’t even been here for a year. Besides, I don’t think Mustang would let him transfer you without a fight.”

They fall into silence and quicken their pace until they’re outside of Grumman’s office. Rebecca knocks twice and waits a moment before entering.

Grumman sits at his desk, arms folded in front of him. Both of them come to attention and salute. “Second Lieutenant Hawkeye, sir,” Rebecca announces. 

“Thank you, Catalina. You’re dismissed.” Grumman smiles, but it lacks the easiness and cheerful sparkle that Riza has seen before, as she stands guard over his games of chess with Roy. “At ease, Second Lieutenant Hawkeye. Come and have a seat.” 

Rebecca goes, throwing a last, encouraging look at Riza over her shoulder. Riza approaches Grumman, taking a seat across from his desk, but she doesn’t relax. Maybe it is just her nerves, but her back is throbbing. Something about being here, facing him - it’s churning up old, unpleasant feelings, of fear, of being reprimanded, of being told that she has been a disappointment. 

“Is there anything that our office can assist you with, Lieutenant General?” Riza asks, calmly and carefully. 

Grumman steeples his fingers together and rests his chin atop them, like Roy does sometimes. Riza tries not to shift in her chair out of unease. “Not quite. There’s something I would like to talk to you about.”

-

Riza steps out of the Lieutenant General’s office thirty minutes later and makes her way back to her office. The hallways of East City Command are crowded at this hour. She weaves through the passing soldiers, blind to their faces. The snatches of conversation that she catches as she passes - normally something that she likes to file away for further reference - sound like nothing more than white noise. Static.

Riza turns a corner and collides hard with someone, before she even registers that somebody had been in her path. His hands are firm on her upper arms, steadying her, and she recognizes the touch in the instant before she looks up.

“Hawkeye?” Roy releases her. “Are you all right?”

Riza nods, still somewhat dazed. “I’m fine, sir. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to review your schedule for the day with you when you got in.”

“You don’t have anything to apologize for. The unit told me that Grumman sent for you as soon as you came in this morning.” Roy studies her, and seems perturbed by what he sees. “Come with me,” he says abruptly.

He leads her toward the front entrance of East City Command. Riza is too numb to ask why they aren’t heading back to their office, and if there is a meeting that he should be attending right now. The autumn sunlight outside is golden and bright, making her blink. The air is brisk, and she shivers without her coat.

They walk to the coffee shop on the corner of Sixth and Marion in silence. The small shop is almost full, save for a tiny table for two near the window. Roy sees it before she does. “Sit,” he instructs, pulling one of the chairs out for her.

Riza sits, while he goes to join the queue. She looks around the shop, at the customers. The group of four elderly women sitting at a circular table, engaged in earnest discussion. The three exhausted-looking young men wearing sweaters emblazoned with the logo of East City University. The two mothers chatting with one another, holding their babies in their arms. One baby boy and one baby girl. 

Roy joins her at the table, jolting her out of her reverie. He slides a steaming mug of tea over to her. Jasmine, her favorite. Riza manages a word of thanks, and wraps her hands around the mug, letting the heat warm her. She is so cold.

“Hawkeye,” Roy prompts, and she looks up at him. “What happened with Grumman? Why did he want to talk to you?”

He sounds on edge. Riza struggles to find the words. “I…” she starts.

Roy leans forward. His knees bump hers under the table. “You’re not being transferred, are you? I won’t let that happen.” 

Under normal circumstances, a small part of her would have been flattered by the worry in Roy’s tone. By the hint of possessiveness. She is one of his unit, a member of  _ his _ team, and nobody stands in the way of that. Riza shakes her head. “It’s not that. It was - personal.”

Roy draws back, clearly confused. “Personal? Do you not want to tell m--”

He’s misunderstanding. “No. It’s not that,” Riza interrupts. Her nerves are frayed, and she can’t figure out how to say it. She can barely even figure out how to  _ think  _ it. “He told me that he’s my grandfather.”

The words feel foreign on her lips, like she’s speaking Drachman. 

Roy stares at her, reduced for once into utter speechlessness. “What?” he croaks, after a few moments. 

“My mother’s father.” Riza stares down into her cup of tea. Her throat is tight. The words come out stiff and flat. “She was estranged from her family over her decision to marry my father. Grumman forbade it. He didn’t think Father was a good match for her. Mother and her parents got into a terrible fight, and she ran away from home, married Father in secret, and moved to the country.” She pauses. Makes herself take another sip of tea. The sweetness is a comfort, at least. 

“My God.” Roy’s voice is barely audible, like it’s coming from far away. “Did Grumman ever search for her?”

“He says he did. But he couldn’t find any trace of her or my father.”

“It was a small town,” Roy murmurs. “Obscure. And your father didn’t publish work in any alchemical journals. Even a Lieutenant General’s connections only go so far, outside of the major cities in Amestris.”

“Right.” It’s difficult to speak, and Roy glances at her sharply, noticing her bitterness, the bitterness that she had done a poor job of concealing. “He heard my name in the war reports. He assumed that Father had a cousin, or a niece, another young woman who carried the Hawkeye name. But then…” Riza shrugs. “He saw me.” 

The only two people who have seen the photograph of her mother - Roy, and Rebecca - have both pointed out the striking resemblance. A resemblance she hadn’t seen herself, until they commented on it. Roy exhales in silent realization. “Of course.” 

“He dug into my personnel records, and requested the paperwork that I submitted when I enrolled in the Academy.” It feels a little like a violation, though she doesn’t say that to Roy. “He found my certificate of completion from secondary school in Cecil. He found my…” Riza’s voice wavers, despite her best efforts to keep her composure. “I indicated, on my enlistment paperwork, that my parents were deceased and I had no next of kin. So he made a trip to Cecil. He found my parents’ death records.”

Roy rubs the back of his neck, evidently ill at ease. “When did he do all of this?”

“Within a month after I was assigned to East City Command.” 

“And he kept it to himself?” Anger creeps into Roy’s tone. “He didn’t say anything to you?”

Riza shrugs again, even though the movement pulls at the scabbing skin on her back. “He wasn’t sure how to broach the topic. He thought it would complicate things.”

Roy laughs, the sound short and harsh. Riza knows that Grumman is his mentor and most powerful ally, in addition to being his commanding officer. It  _ does  _ complicate things, in ways that she can’t begin to wrap her mind around while the shock is still so fresh. “Why now?”

“He noticed that I was gone for a week.”  _ That Mustang was walking around without his loyal shadow,  _ Grumman said to her.  _ How long has it been - just about five months, isn’t it? It’s already strange to see him walking down the halls without you following two steps behind.  _ Riza closes her eyes for a moment. “He said - he said that he was worried.” 

Anger surges up within her, hot and unexpected, catching her unawares, as the emotion always does. What right did Grumman have to be worried about her? 

Roy echoes her movement, closing his own eyes for just a second. His shoulders slump slightly. “He mentioned it to me,” he muses. “The second day you were out. He made a little joke of it. Asked me where my shadow was. I told him you were sick, of course. I didn’t think twice about any of it.” 

Riza nods at the table. 

“What are you going to do?” Roy moves like he’s about to take her hand, and then reaches for the small bottle of honey that sits between them instead. He straightens it where it sits, in relation to the tiny jars of ground cinnamon and sugar beside it. “Does he expect anything of you?” 

Riza wishes he had taken her hand. He’s only done that once, after she had woken up in the middle of the dreadful night after he had burned her back. It had been such an innocent gesture, compared to the other comforts that men have offered her (their lips on hers, their hands all over her). Still, she found it indescribably soothing. “He said that he would like for me to come over for dinner sometime, but he doesn’t want to pressure me.”

“I see.” Roy hesitates. “Will you?” 

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.” Riza finishes her tea. The response is the kind of unguarded honesty that she only offers to Rebecca, and to Roy and her unit, now. She had grown up carefully weighing every word that came out of her mouth, terrified of displeasing Father or anyone else, of having them judge her and finding her not smart enough, not good enough, not kind enough. Of having them turn away from her after that, and seeking someone better. But since meeting Rebecca, since getting to know Roy, Havoc, Breda, and Falman, she’s learned that they  _ don’t _ turn away from her if she says exactly what she thinks and feels. 

“Why? If you don’t mind my asking,” Roy adds, somewhat awkwardly. “A long-lost family member suddenly revealing themselves… It’s like something out of those books that you and Falman like so much.”

“I don’t. Mind you asking, I mean,” Riza ducks her head, feeling a little shy. Still, there are things she can’t tell Roy. About how looking at Grumman across his desk and realizing he wasn’t just the decorated Lieutenant General in command of the hundreds of soldiers stationed in East City, but her  _ grandfather,  _ hadn’t been a pleasant feeling. It had triggered something deep and old and painful inside her. Something reminiscent of Father, even though he hadn’t been Grumman’s son. The desire to please. The desire to make him proud of her. (At any cost, if necessary. Even at the cost of consenting to have a terrible, deadly secret inscribed onto her own flesh.) 

She doesn’t want to revisit those feelings. Those feelings belong to a younger, more desperate, more lonely girl. Not the slightly more secure Riza that she is now. The Second Lieutenant with a best friend and a team and a commanding officer - who are, frankly, friends as well.

The rest of the ugly truth comes out, though. “He told me what he had to say, and I didn’t feel relieved,” Riza confesses. “I felt angry. I--” 

She looks up at Roy, and meets his concerned gaze. “Things were awful, before you came.” The words spill out of her a little too fast. “For eight years. Eight years, Lieutenant Colonel, of doing  _ everything _ alone. Cooking. Eating meals. Mending my clothes. Doing my schoolwork. Shopping at the market. Trying to care for the house and for the manor grounds. I accepted it, at the time, but to know now that things could have been different, that I had a grandfather and grandmother who could have taken me away from all that, if Grumman had just tried harder to find--”

Riza nearly chokes on the words. She doesn’t tell him the rest. The things that she’s only talked to Rebecca about, in bits and pieces. About how she had thought that she was dying, when she had her first period, dying like Mother had died. She cried in the bathroom for an hour. The bleeding didn’t stop and her stomach pain only grew worse. Finally, she balled toilet paper into her underwear, walked to the doctor in town, a hand pressed to her cramping stomach, and confessed everything to the nurse, unable to hold back her tears. The nurse talked to her, gentle and sympathetic, and explained everything about how this was normal and would happen every month, and gave her several boxes of sanitary pads to wear when it happened. 

Riza doesn’t tell him how she didn’t have anyone to tell her when she should start wearing a bra. That had all been so uncomfortable and painful - when her chest started to grow, making her sore all the time, and the boys at school started to stare and talk -  _ they still don’t make her pretty, but  _ god,  _ if I don’t want to -  _ and the girls glared at her and whispered to each other.  _ Slut,  _ they said.  _ Look at her flaunting them. She likes the attention, doesn’t she?  _

Finally, Riza had gone to the small shop in town and picked out a bra, but she didn’t know how they were supposed to fit, so she’d bought one that was too small. It hurt her chest and ribs, the straps digging into her shoulders, leaving angry red weals on her skin. She suffered in silence for a week before going back and trying to buy one that was too big. While ringing up the purchase, the shopkeeper directed one look at the poorly sized bra, took pity on her, and took her into the back room to measure her with a tape and find the proper size. 

Someone could have taken her away from all that. She could have grown up with a grandfather who treated her with kindness and warmth, and a grandmother and maybe a governess to gently introduce her to all the things a girl needed to know. 

She could have been spared the tattoo. 

Roy rests his hand just next to hers on the table. Close enough that their fingers barely brush one another’s. “My aunt fostered teenagers, but she never wanted a young child,” he says, at last. “She still took me in after my parents died. She didn’t want me to end up in an orphanage. If… If I had gone to an orphanage, and years later, I found that I had family who could have saved me from that and chose not to, I don’t know that I could forgive them.”

It hurts her, to imagine a young Roy in an orphanage. He had been a year younger than her when he lost his parents. “I’m glad your aunt took you in.”

“I am, too. I don’t tell her that enough.” Roy sighs. “I think your situation is a little different, though. Grumman didn’t know, Hawkeye. He could have tried harder to find your mother, but ultimately, he didn’t know what happened to her, and your circumstances. I truly believe that if he did, he would have never allowed you to live like you did.” 

Riza brushes the tears from her eyes and glances around the coffee shop self-consciously. There are no other soldiers in here. Her gaze comes to rest on the mothers holding their babies. Grumman must have held her mother like that, once. She had loved Mother so much, and even though she is angry at Grumman… He is still the only thing remaining of Mother, besides herself. She’ll have to think about this further, in a few weeks or months, when everything is less raw. “Thank you, Lieutenant Colonel. For understanding. For listening.”

“Always,” Roy says. “I’ll support whatever you choose as it relates to Grumman.” 

Riza manages a smile. “Thank you.”

“Do you want to take the rest of the day off?” he asks. “You’ve had quite a morning.” 

“No,” Riza replies hastily. She stands. “It makes me feel better, to be around everybody.” 

Roy rises as well, and he smiles at her as they make their way out of the shop. “The feeling is mutual. Breda made a comment while you were gone about how the collective intelligence quotient and emotional intelligence in the office had dropped ten points.”

Riza laughs, something that she would have never imagined doing half an hour ago. “They don’t give themselves enough credit.” She looks at him, belatedly remembering their duties. “What time is it?”

Roy checks his silver pocket watch, and immediately stuffs it back into his coat. “It’s a strange thing. My watch appears to have stopped at eight-hundred hours this morning. Anyway, it doesn’t matter.”

“We’ve missed your meeting at ten with Colonel Jurich, haven’t we?”

“Possibly,” Roy allows. Then he grins at her, irrepressible as always. “But you can reschedule it, right?”

Riza sighs. “Yes, sir.”

-

One of the quirks of Roy’s management style are monthly one-on-one meetings he holds with everyone on the unit, on the fifteenth of every month.  _ He wants to make sure he is challenging us enough and that our duties on the unit play to our strengths,  _ Falman explained to her, prior to her first monthly review with the Lieutenant Colonel.  _ He certainly cares about our professional development and advancement. Much more so than the other commanding officers at East City Command, if you will pardon my interjecting my personal opinion into this.  _

Over the months that she has worked as Roy’s adjutant, Riza has noted that he isn’t as lackadaisical with these meetings as he is with some others on his calendar. She and Roy set them at the first of every month. Breda’s review takes place at ten-hundred hours on the fifteenth, Havoc’s at eleven-hundred, Falman’s at thirteen-hundred, and Riza’s at fourteen-hundred. Meeting requests from Grumman are the only thing that he allows to disrupt that schedule. 

Riza enters Roy’s office at fourteen-hundred hours sharp on the fifteenth of December and stands at attention, offering a salute. It’s easier to move this week than it had been the week before. Her burns are two weeks old and scabbing over now. The itching is unbearable, but she prefers that to the pain and tenderness that had come with the blisters.

“So formal, Hawkeye.” Roy gestures to the chair. “Relax. Sit.”

Riza does. “I apologize for taking a week off during this month’s review period, Lieutenant Colonel. I hope that my solution of having Falman step in as your assistant during my time away was acceptable.”

“Falman was fine, though he was no replacement for you.” Roy leans back in his chair, and takes a sip of his coffee. “You trained him well.” 

“Thank you, sir. I don’t intend to take frivolous leave in the future, but it’s good to know that Falman can step in for me if I’m ever incapacitated.”

A shadow of a frown passes over Roy’s face at the word. “Let’s hope that never happens. And, for the record, I don’t mind you taking leave for - more pleasant reasons than what occurred last month.” 

Rebecca has been talking about a trip to the coast, in Creta. It’s an indulgence that Riza has hesitated to commit to. Does she deserve the luxury of a long weekend away from Amestris, from the goals that she has committed herself to - the goals that won’t redeem her, but are an important step in the right direction, nevertheless? (Roy never takes leave.) She files his answer away for future reference. 

“I may take a long weekend in summer, then,” Riza says, a little reluctantly. “Of course, I’ll coordinate with you beforehand to find the time that’s best for the unit. I don’t want to inconvenience anybody.”

“Good.” Roy makes a note of the planned potential time off in her file. “I’m glad to hear it.”

“How has my performance been, during the weeks that I’ve been present during this review period?”

It isn’t the same intense hunger for recognition and approval that had plagued her during her time as a new cadet, or even in Ishval, but Riza feels a flicker of warmth and relief when Roy smiles at her. “You’ve been flawless, as always.” He shuffles the paperwork on his desk, as if slightly self-conscious. “There’s only one thing I wanted to address with you. It doesn’t have to do with your performance at work.”

He had been clear with her in a way she appreciates, trying to set her at ease, but Riza still stiffens. There should be no reason for her to be worried. She hasn’t done anything extracurricular for the past two weeks, due to the hideous state that her back is in right now. Besides, she’s always extraordinarily careful. She goes to bars as far as possible from East City Command while still being in the city limits. She scans each bar she walks into, and immediately leaves if she spots any soldiers she recognizes from the hallways or mess hall of East City Command, regardless of how peripheral they are to her and her unit’s day to day operations. 

And ever since graduating from the Academy, since moving here to East City, Riza has never, ever slept with a fellow soldier. She never even  _ looks  _ too long at men outside of her unit. She never jokes or flirts, and even avoids smiling and laughing around soldiers outside of her unit, just for good measure. Riza is confident in saying that no man at East City Command would ever guess the kind of woman she is after hours, off duty. 

( _ Slut,  _ the girls at school had called her, once.  _ She likes the attention, doesn’t she?  _ Maybe they had been right about her, after all.) 

“Yes, sir?” Riza asks, pleased that she sounds as cool and controlled as she always likes to. 

“You, um.” Roy runs a hand through his hair, making it stand on end. It’s an old gesture she remembers from when he had been sixteen, and Riza tries not to stare. “Have you been getting much sleep? You’ve been looking...more tired, of late. Not to say that you look bad,” he adds quickly. “Just. Tired. Around your eyes.”

He winces, looking as if he would rather be anywhere else in the world than here. Roy had been raised by his aunt, and he’s mentioned growing up surrounded by foster sisters. He probably knows, better than most men, that one doesn’t tell a woman she looks  _ tired.  _

Riza looks down at the desk, embarrassed. The dark shadows under her eyes, from lack of sleep due to nights ravaged by nightmares, had never really gone away after Ishval. Rebecca had very kindly shown her how to conceal them with cosmetics, but Riza doesn’t bother to do it every morning before work. Just when she goes out at night and wants to look her best. 

“I don’t get as much sleep as I should,” Riza admits. Only the memory of the conversation they had on the train when returning from Ishval allows her to continue. “But it’s not - it’s not that I plan my personal schedule poorly.” She is disciplined. On work nights, she is always in bed by twenty-two hundred hours, allowing for eight and a half hours of sleep. 

Roy understands what she had left unsaid, of course. “Nightmares?” 

“Yes.” Riza averts her eyes. “It’s been especially bad of late.” 

He tenses up, and she falls silent. They both know what has happened recently enough to worsen her state of mind. 

“What do you do to address the issue, if you don’t mind my asking?” It’s an overly personal question; one that Riza wouldn’t ask normally. She knows too well about coping mechanisms that aren’t suitable to discuss out loud with others. (Physical intimacy helps her sleep through the night, free of nightmares. She’s heard that other soldiers on the front lines of Ishval have turned to drugs and alcohol, like Rebecca’s oldest brother had after he returned from the front years ago). But she’s mortified at her earlier lapse, desperate to fill the heavy silence that had descended on them. 

“I don’t. Mind your asking, that is.” Roy laughs, sharp and humorless. “Liquor combined with a few medical alchemy tricks can send me into a sleep without dreams. Neither of which are good options for you.” 

Riza bites back her envy. “If you say so, sir.” Fleetingly, she wonders what would happen if she tried to learn alchemy again - just medical alchemy. Would the lack of talent she’d had at five still persist all these years later?

“I have a more appropriate suggestion for you,” Roy says, with some hesitation. “But it’ll sound childish and simplistic. And it isn’t always effective.” 

“I’d still be interested in learning, Lieutenant Colonel.”

“I assume you’re like me, Hawkeye,” he says, after a brief pause. “You lie down at night, and you close your eyes, and you think about the work day that just passed. Then you think about the work day ahead, and the week ahead. And that slides into thinking about the months and years to come, and all the good work you plan to do in an attempt to atone for the past. But that gets you remembering the past.”

It’s such an apt description of her nights that it leaves Riza breathless. “Yes.” Her voice falters. 

Roy twirls his pen through his fingers. “So I try not to think about work or the future at all, on nights when I shouldn’t drink and put myself to sleep. I think about other things. Things that I find comforting. My aunt and my older sisters teaching me how to tend the bar when I was a kid. Borrowing my aunt’s car and going for drives with Hughes outside of the city, back when we were still in the academy.” He gestures vaguely at the door to his office. “Going to Breda’s ice hockey matches with you all. When you and I work late and order takeout.” 

He stops. There’s a faint tinge of color to his cheeks now, but Riza understands, more than she can say, about how one can treasure the kindness and warmth of others so deeply. “What about you?” Roy asks, clearing his throat.

Her first instinct for comfort - touch, attention, sweet words murmured to her - isn’t something that she can share with him. Besides, when she thinks of that when trying to get to sleep, revisiting those memories doesn’t sustain her for long. It just leaves her aching and hollow and hungry for more. 

Riza puts that out of her mind, and tries to think of other things that soothe her and make her happy, other memories that she can hold close at night. “Sitting with Rebecca on her sofa and talking. When Falman and I went to our favorite author’s book signing at Uptown Books. When Havoc, Breda, and I play pool at the Molten Rose, and when…” 

A couple of memories come to her, unbidden. A memory of walking back to East City Command after an investigation with Roy, when it started to rain, and she had opened an umbrella for him to keep him dry. He threw a look back over his shoulder at her.  _ You’re going to get wet, Hawkeye. Let me hold that and come under here with me.  _

A memory of the evening in late September when it was unseasonably cold and the heater was on the fritz again, and she was sitting at her desk, fighting back her shivers as she tried to work. Out of nowhere, she felt something warm and heavy drop down onto her shoulders. Riza had turned to see Roy walking back to his office, his dark overcoat draped over her back. 

“...When I go for walks in the park, and I see dogs playing with their owners,” Riza finishes. 

Roy nods, satisfied. “Try thinking about all of that at night. It doesn’t help all the time. But I’ve found that it does make a difference.”

“Thank you, sir. I appreciate it.” 

Roy indicates his cup of coffee. “On nights that doesn’t do the trick, this helps me stay awake during the day. And I use a couple of alchemical flourishes to give myself the fresh, well-rested complexion that you know so well.”

Riza stares. 

“I’m joking, Hawkeye.” Roy looks slightly pained.

“Please don’t do that again.”

“I’m underappreciated by all of you.” Roy straightens the collar of his uniform coat with a long-suffering air. “Someday you’ll realize.”

“Of course, sir.” Riza stands, and makes her way to the door. She rests her hand on the frame, and looks back at him for just an instant before leaving. “We’re lucky to have you, Lieutenant Colonel.”

-

When Riza had requested her assignment to East City, it had been with the intention of protecting people from Roy, if it became necessary. 

Somehow, somewhere over the course of that late fall as it wears into winter, a winter unusually cold for East City, there’s a subtle shift in her thinking. Riza doesn’t realize it until they’re in the middle of a sting in downtown East City, until she’s shooting the perpetrator who has aimed his gun at Roy. (She shoots her target straight through the hand. She doesn’t aim to kill.)

“Thanks, Hawkeye,” Roy says, after the arrest is made. 

“Anytime,” Riza replies. And she realizes that she will always be dedicated to protecting people from Roy, if it ever becomes necessary. But she’s also just as dedicated to protecting him.

It has occurred to her, every time she watches Roy practice his alchemy, every time she thinks back to Ishval, that the world would be a safer place without the Flame Alchemist in it. But a world without the Flame Alchemist is also a world without  _ Roy.  _ Without his kindness, dedication, and intelligence. Without his sense of justice, his vision for a better future, and the high standards he holds himself and others to. (Without his laugh, and his sarcastic little comments, and the way he squabbles with Hughes and Havoc sometimes, like he’s a decade younger than his age). 

Riza tries, with varying levels of success, to reconcile these two truths. That she would love to live in a world without Flame Alchemy - and that she would hate to live in a world without Roy. 

-

“Are you sure you won’t come out with us tonight? Aitkin got reservations at that new Cretan place that just opened up. I’ve heard they have a seafood pasta that’s absolutely to die for.” 

“Next time. I have something I need to take care of, and I can’t leave until it’s done,” Riza promises, winding the cord of her office phone around her finger. It had taken Rebecca a little while to warm up to her fellow staff members at Grumman’s office, and vice versa. Relations finally thawed, and now the five of them socialize outside of work a couple of times a month. Rebecca has always extended her an invitation to join them. They’re decent, Riza had found. Not as good as her own unit, of course (with the obvious exception of Rebecca), but that’s to be expected. “Do you want to come over for dinner at my place tomorrow?”

“Yes, Second Lieutenant!” Rebecca chirps. “Don’t stay in the office too late!”

She disconnects, and Riza hangs up as well. Havoc gives her a look of mock disapproval as he stands up from his desk, grabbing his coat from the rack. “Personal phone calls with Catalina on the work line, Hawkeye? That’s so unprofessional.”

“You’re fine, Hawkeye,” Breda says, as he packs up his things. “He’s still mad about the riot act that you and Falman read him about his  _ attempt  _ at phone sex in the office last week--”

Riza and Falman shudder at the memory. “Hey!” Havoc protests, turning red. “You can’t make judgments, I was just warming up - I was building up to the good stuff when you guys walked in!” 

The four of them bicker about it as they say their farewells for the weekend, until they are interrupted by a knock at the door. Falman opens it. Instead of the courier from Major Rippe’s office, who Riza has been expecting for the last hour, a young woman sails in. She’s lovely, with long, brown hair and large eyes framed by thick lashes, and she’s wearing an expensive-looking dress in cerulean blue. “Good evening, everyone!”

“Hi, Vanessa,” Breda, Falman, and Havoc all chorus. Vanessa turns a bright smile on them. “Is Roy in? We have dinner plans at six-thirty.” 

“He’s in his office.” Breda gestures over. Roy strolls out, as if on cue. His hair is tousled, as if he had just woken up from a nap. Which, knowing him, is entirely within the realm of possibility. 

“Vanessa,” Roy greets. He smiles, and Riza feels an uncharitable stab of jealousy as Vanessa (who everyone else seems to know, and who she has never heard of) dashes over to Roy and throws her arms around him, hugging him tight. 

“Roy! How are you?” 

Riza looks back to her paperwork, feeling her cheeks flame. 

“I hate him,” Havoc whispers to Breda and Falman, as the three of them leave for the evening. “I hate him  _ so much,  _ how does he get gorgeous women to come  _ all the way from Central  _ just to go on a date with him?” 

“He is the Flame Alchemist, and a Lieutenant Colonel--”

“Lieutenant Colonel _whatever,_ Falman, I’m taller than he is and so are you--” 

Riza swallows over a sudden, swooping sense of nausea. She continues to write, even as her heart rate picks up. It’s ridiculous. It’s none of her concern what Roy does in his private life. He’s her commanding officer. And even outside of that, he’s her friend.  _ Just a friend,  _ as she’s told Rebecca so many times. She has no claim on him whatsoever. (So why had the sight of Vanessa pressed up against him had such an impact on her, and why had Havoc’s casual mention of  _ gorgeous women,  _ plural, made her stomach turn over--) 

It’s unreasonable. It’s the height of hypocrisy, besides, considering what  _ she  _ does. 

Roy leads Vanessa over to her desk, and Riza stands. “Hawkeye, Vanessa,” he introduces. “Vanessa, Hawkeye. Hawkeye’s charge is to keep me alive and somewhat productive, and she succeeds brilliantly at both.”

Vanessa regards her, comprehension dawning in her eyes, as she holds a hand out. “So you’re Riza! We’ve heard so much about you!”

Riza shakes her hand. “All good things, I hope,” she says, with an easiness she doesn’t feel. 

Vanessa beams up at Roy. “Oh, yes, you wouldn’t believe--”

Roy puts a hand on Vanessa’s shoulder. “We should head out, if we don’t want to be late for dinner. Don’t stay too late yourself, Hawkeye. If Rippe doesn’t send anyone within the next half hour, he’s not going to.” 

Riza assents and sits down, and pretends she doesn’t notice the curious look Vanessa gives her as she and Roy leave. When the office door has closed firmly behind them, she puts her head in her hands, and takes a deep breath. 

-

Riza waits thirty minutes. The courier from Major Rippe’s office doesn’t show up. She goes home and sits on her sofa for a while, her hands pressed between her knees.  _ Don’t,  _ she tells herself.  _ Don’t.  _ She’s been so good, for a good length of time now. She’s been trying to focus on other things, like the fact that she has friends who think kindly of her, who treasure her and value her. She’s been doing so well. 

-

She puts on a dress that is as tight as Vanessa’s had been, though it doesn’t have the same low back. (Of course it doesn’t. Vanessa’s back is probably perfect, the creamy skin unmarred by thick scars and a tattoo that reminds Roy of his worst memories in Ishval. Vanessa probably lets men - Roy - stroke her back, and roll her over onto her front and press kisses down her spine. She wouldn’t have to shy away from any position that would give a man a clear look at her back.) 

Riza meets someone at a bar on the outskirts of East City. He’s the chief resident at East City General Hospital. His hair is brown and he’s too tall, but his eyes are kind, behind his glasses. He talks about the satisfaction of a correct diagnosis and being able to get someone the treatment they need, and he discusses the misadventures of his student interns with such affection, and it reminds her so powerfully of--

-

Riza comes home late, and takes a long, cold shower. (She hasn’t been able to take a hot shower since the burning, even in the middle of winter.) She wraps herself in her soft pink robe, and sits on the sofa again, holding a mug of hot herbal tea.

The chief resident had been as kind as she hoped. He’d been tender. Riza still looked up at him and wished it were someone else kissing her and holding her in his arms. 

It made her feel dirty, enough that she hadn’t even been able to completely enjoy being held afterwards. The warmth and satisfaction she normally has after a night like this had been fleeting tonight. 

She had fantasized about Roy as a teenager, and that had triggered enough shame, considering his age in relation to hers. Now he is her commanding officer, and her unit is like the family she never had, and that makes it  _ so  _ much worse than it ever had been before. It’s almost incestuous. It’s acceptable for her to love Roy in the way that everyone else loves him - Hughes, Breda, Havoc, Falman. There’s something about Roy that triggers that kind of loyalty and devotion. It’s  _ not  _ acceptable for romantic love to creep into that, tangling her feelings into a hopeless mess of platonic devotion intertwined with other types of longing. It feels wrong, to want the things she does from him. 

(It isn’t even sex. Riza doesn’t want sex. She wants Roy to hold her hand, or wrap an arm around her shoulder, or place a hand on the small of her back, while they walk. She wants him to push a strand of hair behind her ear and press a kiss to her cheek before they leave the office and go back to their own apartments for the evening. She wants his nose touching hers, a kiss to her forehead, and that smile,  _ oh,  _ that smile, as they eat dinner together and talk on the sofa in her apartment.) 

Riza wraps her arms around herself. It’s a line that she can’t cross. She has fraternized inappropriately before, with Reid and with Bresler, and those had been the mistakes of a desperate girl. It makes her shudder to think of the risks she had taken with her reputation and professional life. The fact that no harm had been done to her career or reputation with either affair had truly been a stroke of luck. 

She isn’t perfect - tonight had proved that - but she isn’t that girl anymore, either. She isn’t the type of person, the type of soldier, who fucks her commanding officer. She cannot, will not, cross that line with Roy. No matter how much she wants to. No matter how much she wants him.

Riza stands up, and slowly makes her way to bed.

-

On Saturday, Riza goes for a run in the park, visits the library, cleans her apartment, and has Rebecca over for dinner. She spends Sunday training with weights, reading, and cooking her dinners for the week. She does not allow herself to think about Roy and Vanessa and the blissful weekend they are probably having together. 

Riza reports for work at seven-hundred hours on Monday morning, as usual. She’s the first one in. She sorts through her inbox, retrieving the paperwork that needs Roy’s attention, and gathers up an armful of reports. 

Riza enters his office without knocking and shuts the door behind her, expecting to find the room deserted. She nearly jumps when she sees Roy sitting at his desk, writing in a leather-bound journal. 

“Lieutenant Colonel,” she gasps. “I’m sorry - I didn’t think you would be in at this hour.”

“Don’t worry. I’m not going to make it a habit.” Roy stifles a yawn. “I had some notes I wanted to take care of before my regular paperwork arrived to plague me. How was your weekend, Hawkeye?”

“Fine,” Riza replies automatically, and she has to ask about his weekend, because that’s what they always do for each other. Even though she doesn’t really want to know. “How was yours? Did your girlfriend enjoy East City?”

“My--” Roy stops mid-stretch. He directs a quick look at the closed door, and then back at her. “Do you want to sit?”

Not particularly, but Riza takes a seat anyway. Roy taps his fingertips against the desk, and she recognizes the nervous gesture. “This stays between us,” he says. “I haven’t told the others on the unit yet. It’s something I’ve always been in the habit of keeping to myself.” 

“Of course, sir.” Riza spares a moment to wonder at his odd demeanor.

“Vanessa isn’t my girlfriend. She’s one of my informants.” 

Riza hadn’t expected that. She stares, taken aback. “Your...informants?”

Roy answers her question with one of his own. “I’ve mentioned that my aunt owns a bar in Central, right?”

Riza nods. “You grew up there.” Undoubtedly a strange environment for a child to grow up in, but she had imagined the constant flow of people at a bar, the conversations, the chatter, the music, the liveliness of it. All a stark contrast to the heavy, oppressive silence and solitude of Hawkeye Manor. She had been envious of Roy for that reason, among so many others. 

Roy sighs. “What I didn’t mention was that it’s a hostess bar.”

She’s passably familiar with the term. It still takes a moment for it to sink in.

“It’s quite high-end.” There’s a hint of defensiveness in Roy’s tone. “A little more than half of the regular clientele are military officers, including several members of senior staff.”

Riza shakes her head. “I’d be the last person to offer judgement, sir.” The words are genuine, too honest. 

“You’re kind, Hawkeye.” Roy’s voice is soft. “In any case, my aunt and the ladies who work there - as you can imagine, they come across quite a lot of sensitive information. Information that they then pass on to me. In exchange, I direct some of my salary to the upkeep of the bar. Liquor license costs, maintenance, et cetera.” 

“An interesting arrangement, Lieutenant Colonel.” Riza’s fascination mingles with the relief at his first admission.  _ Vanessa isn’t my girlfriend.  _ She suppresses those thoughts as irrelevant to the conversation at hand. “I have to admit, I’ve wondered about how you’re always so well-informed about the details of what takes place in Central Command and Central City, despite being posted here in the East. I assumed that your source was Hughes.”

“Oh, he is,” Roy assures her. “But there are limits to the information he can get me. My aunt and the other ladies fill in the gaps. And vice versa.”

“Clever,” Riza comments. “May I ask why you haven’t informed the others?”

“I will, in time.” Roy leans back in his chair. “I wanted to initially. But the first time Vanessa visited, Havoc made an assumption, and I realized it was advantageous to my image. A young Lieutenant Colonel who’s only interested in pretty women is a lot less threatening to the other officers here than someone who is openly ambitious.” He smirks. “Havoc was overheard complaining about my success with getting attractive dates, and the rumor spread.” 

“You’re right about the importance of image,” Riza admits. All female soldiers understand that.

“I told you because you’re the one who’ll accompany me to Central on business in the future. I’d like to introduce you to my aunt and the ladies at the bar when we visit Central next month. They should be able to work with you as they work with me.” Roy looks down at his journal. “While we’re there, I’ll teach you a few of the codes for verbal communication that my aunt taught me. That will come in useful for the two of us. I’ll also show you how I encode my notes in this journal, so that you can decipher them if I’m ever out of commission.” 

It’s unheard of for an alchemist to teach someone else their method of encoding their notes. Riza remembers that much from her father. It is perhaps the first time she has felt the full weight of the trust Roy puts in her. It’s a remarkable thing. 

Father had chosen her to bear the secret of Flame Alchemy out of mere necessity. Roy has chosen her to be the keeper of his secrets out of...trust. Real, genuine trust. It warms her inside, and Riza bows her head in assent. “Thank you, sir.”

-

They work late on Friday. Over cartons of takeout for dinner in Roy’s office, Riza ventures to repay the confidence he had shared in her with one of her own. 

“Lieutenant Colonel?”

“Hmm?” Roy glances up from his pursuit of digging the bits of baby corn out of his stir-fry to eat first.

Riza looks into the depths of her own noodles. As hard as she tries to replicate the recipe at home, she can never quite get the hang of it. “I’ve been thinking about what we discussed a couple of months ago.”

“You’ll have to remind me,” Roy says, speaking around a mouthful of stir-fry. He’s the picture of dining etiquette when the unit goes out to eat (in contrast to Havoc), but when it’s just the two of them in the office, he devours food in a manner reminiscent of a starving wolf. “We talk about a lot of things.”

“It’s about Grumman, sir.” 

Roy sets his food down on his desk, dinner temporarily forgotten. “Yes?”

“I’ve been thinking that I would…” Riza pauses before finishing. Once she puts the words out there, the words that she’s been mulling over for months, she can’t take them back. “I would like to take him up on his offer of meeting for dinner.”

Roy smiles at her, so genuinely that it takes her breath away for an instant. “That’s good, Hawkeye. I’m happy for you.”

Riza can’t help but smile back, even though her insides are still a nervous knot. “Thank you.”

“What made you change your mind?” Once, Roy would have prefaced the question with,  _ if you don’t mind my asking.  _ Sometime over the past months, that tentativeness, that formality, had slipped away. Riza has noticed the same thing happening with her. She asks him questions about his plans for the future, about his thought process (and occasionally, his lack thereof), with an openness and lack of hesitation she would have never imagined, once.

Riza sets her own box of noodles down on the desk, and then regrets it, for her hands are left empty. She looks down at them, remembering the warmth of Mother’s fingers intertwined with hers. “I imagine that all children are sentimental about their mothers. Especially those who have lost their mothers at an early age.”

(When they had visited Chris Mustang’s bar, back in Central, Roy had been struck by a fit of nostalgia and gave her a tour of the place. He took her up two flights of stairs to his childhood bedroom, the room that Madame Christmas still keeps furnished for him. He opened the top drawer of the bedside table and pulled out a box made of carved jade. He flipped the box open, and showed her a yellowing photograph of his parents, his father’s university pin, and a jeweled hair comb belonging to his mother.) 

“Yes,” Roy says simply, now. “I imagine so.”

Riza takes a deep breath. She’s only spoken about her mother in any detail to Rebecca before. “Even with that in mind, she was the kindest, most loving person I’ve ever known.” Thankfully, her voice doesn’t break. “The memories I have of her - they sustained me for years.” (They kept her warm. They nourished her. Sometimes Riza still hears Mother’s voice in her mind, tender and gentle.) “And I… the more I’ve thought about it, the more I would like to know about the people who raised her to be the person she was. They had her for eighteen years, Lieutenant Colonel. I just had her for five.”

Roy nods. “It makes sense. I learned so much about my parents from listening to Chris’s stories. So much I would never have known otherwise. Not that you need my approval, but I think you’re making the right decision.”

“I still value your opinion, sir.” Riza realizes that she’s picking at the skin at the base of her thumbnail, an old habit picked up after returning from Ishval that she still hasn’t been able to shake. “But now that I’ve made the decision, I’m not sure how to proceed,” she acknowledges, with some reluctance. “I haven’t even spoken to Grumman about this yet. I don’t want anyone else to know of our relationship. I don’t want to be perceived as using my familial connection to him to advance my own career. And I don’t want anyone to look suspiciously on you, due to your connection to both of us.”

“Valid concerns, all.” Roy taps his chopsticks against his chin contemplatively. “I have an idea. I’ve had dinner at Grumman’s place several times. Tomorrow I’ll ask Grumman if both of us can come over on Saturday evening. You’ll accompany me. Anyone who sees us or hears of the occasion will assume that Grumman and I are meeting for professional purposes, and you’re coming with me because you’re my assistant.” 

Riza raises an eyebrow. “That’s a good idea, sir.”

Roy draws himself up to his full height in his office chair, evidently injured. “You don’t have to sound so surprised, you know. In any case, once we’re in Grumman’s house, I’ll settle myself in his library and give you two a chance to catch up.” 

“You would do that for me?”

The question slips out, in a rare, unguarded moment. This time, Roy is the one to raise an eyebrow. “Hawkeye,” he says. “I’d do a great deal for you.”

He would do the same for everyone in the unit, Riza is sure of that, but she blushes anyway. Roy clears his throat and reaches for his dinner again. “The food is rather spicy tonight, isn’t it?”

Riza leaps on the change of subject with gratitude. 

-

Roy confirms their dinner with Grumman for Saturday at eighteen-hundred hours via a memo that he drops off at her desk on Friday morning. 

Her stomach twists the instant she reads it. Riza spends the rest of the work day nearly trembling with anxiety. She assumes the stoic façade she had learned in Ishval, desperate to hide her state of mind from the rest of the unit. It works well until Falman notices her picking at her lunch in the mess hall and asks her if she’s ill again. 

She can’t bring herself to cancel her dinner plans with Rebecca. Spending time with her best friend always makes her feel better. Riza chats with Rebecca about work and her unit, and listens to Rebecca alternately vent about and psychoanalyze the lackluster dinner date she went on earlier in the week. It is an excellent distraction. 

Then Rebecca quite offhandedly mentions Grumman, and Riza drops her fork with a clatter into the empty bowl. 

-

Rebecca doesn’t let her explain it away as a hand tremor. Besides, Riza doesn’t really want to hide it from Rebecca anyway. (There’s already so much she hides. Rebecca asks her every couple of months if she’s been on any dates, and Riza says  _ no  _ because what she does isn’t dating. Rebecca suggests finding a boyfriend, and Riza can’t explain that the idea is incongruous and incomprehensible because she is too damaged, too broken, for something as innocent and uncomplicated as a boyfriend.) 

Riza confesses it all. The facts of it, at least. She doesn’t say,  _ I’m terrified,  _ because the only other male family member she had was Father and he had put a hundred little cracks into her before Ishval shattered the rest.

“I don’t know what to wear,” Riza says, instead, as the tears overflow. “I’ve never - I’ve never had dinner with a grandparent before. I don’t know what to wear.” 

Rebecca grasps her hand tightly. “We’ll go shopping together tomorrow.”

-

Riza starts getting ready at sixteen-hundred hours on Saturday. She takes a cold shower, resting her head against the tile of the shower stall in an attempt to ease her nerves and nausea. She puts on the lilac chiffon dress that she had bought with Rebecca earlier in the day.

Riza stares at herself in the mirror, as she had done in the boutique’s fitting room. This dress makes her look like nothing more than a young woman from a nice family. Not the veteran (the war criminal) that she is. She applies cosmetics carefully, concealing the dark circles underneath her eyes, pressing soft pink lipstick to her lips. 

She paces in tight circles around the living room of her apartment, remembering the lessons she has learned over the past year. Remembering everything that makes her different from the person she had once been. Just because she is going to meet family, for the first time since Father had passed - just because that family also happens to be a Lieutenant General and the most senior military official in East City - doesn’t mean that she has to regress. She won’t yearn for his approval and affirmation and affection. 

The knock on the front door breaks her out of her reverie, and Riza opens it. Roy stands outside, flawless in his dress pants and shirt and tie, and ubiquitous dark overcoat. She should be immune by now, but he looks so handsome that Riza almost forgets what happened the last time he stood on her doorstep. 

Roy swallows, now, as he looks at her. He’s seen her in civilian clothes before - usually skirts with sweaters or blouses, depending on the season. Never anything so nice. 

“You look lovely,” he says, glancing away, eyeing the doorframe. 

Any man on her unit would have said the same to her. They’re all kind to each other. That’s the sort of relationship that they have. (She’ll still treasure this compliment, returning to it later, like she returns to her favorite books.) “Thank you.” Riza smooths her hands against her skirt. “Shall we?”

They walk down the stairs beside one another, not with her following two steps behind, as she normally does. Riza has the brief, inappropriate thought that anyone who passes them would think they were nothing more than a couple heading out for a Saturday night date. Not the Lieutenant Colonel and his assistant. Not the Flame Alchemist and the Hawk’s Eye. Not a pair of traitorous co-conspirators. 

(She wishes they could be nothing more than a couple heading out for a Saturday night date.)

-

They stand on the front porch of Grumman’s home, a manor in a quiet gated community, a few minutes before eighteen-hundred hours. Roy knocks on the door, and Riza stifles the sudden urge to be sick into the rosebushes. She clasps her hands together, another old, nervous habit.  _ It’s all right,  _ she tells herself.

Roy brushes his arm against hers ever so lightly, and Riza looks over at him. “It’s all right,” he says, in an undertone.

Grumman opens the door then. “Come in, come in,” he says, ushering them inside, greeting them and taking their coats, inquiring about the traffic and how their Saturdays have been, as he leads them to the sitting room. He’s dressed overly formally, in a three-piece suit, and his gaze lingers on her. Riza sees a glint of pain there, quickly masked with another smile as he turns to Roy. 

_ You’re the image of her,  _ Rebecca said, when she had seen the photograph of her mother.  _ You look just like her,  _ Roy observed. For the first time, Riza wonders what it must have been like for Grumman, to see her in the meeting rooms and hallways of East City Command for this past year. Grumman has always seen her dressed as a soldier, in her blue wool uniform. This is the first time he’s ever seen her in a dress. In something that her mother might have worn. 

There’s genuine warmth, fondness, and ease in the way he interacts with Roy. Riza watches them, a little tongue-tied, not sure where or how to step into the conversation. She feels thirteen again, at once sorrowful and envious at her Father’s preference for Roy over her. 

Roy comes to an abrupt stop in front of Grumman’s library, a cozy room with a fire crackling in the hearth, and walls lined with overflowing bookshelves. “If it’s all right with both of you, I’d like to find the Schmidt manifesto we were discussing yesterday before we settle in for dinner. Please come find me before we eat - I’m pretty hungry.”

He wanders into the library and heads straight for the shelves. Riza watches him go with mingled astonishment and amusement at the boldness of the maneuver.

Grumman laughs, and she looks at him, startled. “He’s not subtle, is he?” he asks. 

Riza offers him a tentative smile. Grumman is still a stranger to her, but she realizes, belatedly, that they do have one thing in common, besides her mother - a mutual attachment to Roy. “Not at all, sir.”

“The cook should have dinner ready in half an hour.” Grumman straightens his dinner jacket, which Riza is beginning to notice is his own subtle tell of nervousness. “I set out some of Cintra’s old things in my study. Would you like to see them?”

The offer takes her by surprise, and Riza stammers a little. “Yes. Very much.”

Grumman leads her down the hall to his study. It’s larger than the library had been, and almost every inch of the walls are covered with detailed maps of Amestris and its surrounding countries. It’s the portrait that draws Riza’s attention, though - a large, old portrait of a much, much younger Grumman, clean-shaven, with no spectacles and a full head of thick brown hair. He stands beside a lovely woman with long blonde hair, strikingly similar in appearance to Riza’s mother.

“My wife, Eleanor,” Grumman explains. There’s a small, soft smile on his face as he regards the portrait. “Your grandmother.”

“She was beautiful. She looks so much like Mother.” Cintra Grumman had left home at eighteen. Grumman has no memories of her at twenty-six - which looks to be the age Eleanor is in the portrait.

“The family resemblance is strong.” Grumman tears his gaze away from the portrait with some difficulty, and gestures to a box resting atop his desk. “Can I…”

Riza nods, and takes a deep breath, marshaling her composure. “Yes, sir.”

Grumman pulls out several of her mother’s baby clothes, impossibly tiny dresses in pink and lavender and sunshine yellow, carefully preserved between layers of tissue paper. He pulls out a leather-bound album of photographs, photographs of her mother as a baby and toddler and little girl with her parents. They turn the pages, and Riza watches Cintra grow into a teenager, a young woman. She looks as gentle and thoughtful as Riza remembers. As a young woman, she had a shy smile. 

(Cintra deserved to grow as old as her own mother had. She deserved better than dying at twenty-six, her lungs ravaged by influenza and then pneumonia, trying to be brave for her own little girl, even in her last moments. Riza tries not to weep.) 

They come to the end of the book too quickly. Riza looks away, at the detailed topological map of Drachma, in an attempt to calm herself. “You don’t have to give this to me, sir,” she manages. The spine of the album is cracked; the pages worn in a way that indicates frequent handling. “It’s your keepsake. Of Grandmother, as well.” 

Grumman clears his throat. “Nonsense,” he says, a little gruffly. “You should have it.” 

Riza takes the album, and holds it close to her chest. “Thank you.”

“There’s more.” Grumman indicates the box. Riza peers down into it, and sees several leather-bound journals. She sets the album down, and picks up one of the journals, carefully opening it. Her hands tingle at the knowledge that Mother had held this book, once. 

She marvels at the writing. Her handwriting is similar to Mother’s, too, neat and precise in the same way. Riza brushes her fingertips across the words reverently, tracing the letters. It isn’t a daily journal, though maybe some of the other books are. “This is…”

“Prose and poetry. She loved to write. She was always curled up somewhere in the manor or on the grounds with her pen in hand, staring down at her books.” Grumman rests his hand on the edge of the box. “You’ll see that she was quite talented.”

“She told me stories,” Riza says, even though she hadn’t planned to. Grumman has shared so much with her tonight, and she can share with him, too. He had given her an insight into the girl that Mother had been. Maybe she can give him an insight into the woman, and mother, that Cintra Grumman had become. “Stories about dogs that went on adventures, and families of shooting stars that traveled around the world, seeing wondrous things.”

Grumman laughs, and there’s pain in it, but there’s joy, too. “That doesn’t surprise me.” 

“She did everything with me.” Riza wipes her eyes. “We gardened together, and drew, and she taught me how to read years before I started school. We picked flowers in the meadow, and she took me out for ice cream every couple of weeks.”

“Of course. Eleanor and I did the same thing when she was a girl,” Grumman says quietly. “Did she get strawberry? Do you remember?”

“Every single time. I think of her whenever I have it.” Riza’s voice breaks. “She was wonderful, sir. The best.” 

Grumman gives her his handkerchief, and stands by her side, his head bowed, as she wipes at her eyes and her face. 

“I’m glad that you came tonight, Hawkeye.” He rests his hand on her shoulder, for just a moment. A kind, fatherly touch - something that she had craved from Father for years. Something that would have made all the difference during those long years of growing up. “I would very much appreciate the opportunity to get to know you better.”

Riza folds the handkerchief. “I am too, sir. And I feel the same way.” She smiles. “The Lieutenant Colonel was kind to offer a suggestion as to how we could meet without arousing suspicion.”

“The two of you are always welcome here, under the same pretext.” Grumman offers her his arm. No one has ever done that before, and Riza takes it as they leave the study, returning to the library. “Mustang is a good man. The kind of man I wanted for Cintra.”

“He is,” Riza agrees softly.

Grumman looks at her out of the corner of his eye. There is something curious, something speculative, in his expression, and Riza blushes. 

* * *

_to be continued_

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you so much to everyone who left comments and kudos on the previous chapter. I love seeing them.
> 
> It was a breath of fresh air to write this chapter, as Riza works on healing, and falls in love. 
> 
> I hope that you enjoyed reading; I'd absolutely love to know what you thought! Additionally, I am on tumblr @lantur if you would like to connect. :)


	6. six

Later that summer, Riza accompanies her Lieutenant Colonel to a small town in Eastern Amestris called Resembool, on a tip regarding two talented alchemists who could be recruited for the State Alchemist program. They’re brothers - the Elric brothers, according to Roy’s paperwork. She and Roy have spent a good deal of time this year traveling extensively around Eastern Amestris, pursuing leads on potential new State Alchemists. None have come to fruition thus far, but Roy is hopeful about these Elric brothers nevertheless. 

Riza does not enjoy these missions. She flinches back, reflexively, from anything to do with the State Alchemist program, even though she knows of two State Alchemists (Roy and Major Alex Armstrong) who are good, kind men. She doesn’t support the idea of swelling the ranks of State Alchemists with more human weapons for the military, for Fuhrer Bradley, to use as he sees fit. 

(Riza wakes up every morning and comes into work, and she reads the newspaper a bit obsessively, poring over it for any signs of conflict or unrest in Amestris. Any excuse that Fuhrer Bradley might use to order the military into the region, just like he had done in Ishval. She and Roy have spent many late nights at the office coming up with emergency plans for how they will respond if Bradley orders the military and State Alchemists to mobilize against the people again.) 

Still, Roy’s charge is to replenish the ranks of State Alchemists, depleted after the war. Riza has no choice but to support him in that. It is a quandary. Every failed lead is a setback for Roy and the promotion to Colonel that he’s working toward, and Riza feels his disappointments as keenly as she has ever felt her own. Every failed lead is also one fewer tool for slaughter that the military can use against its own people, next time. Because there will be a next time. 

In Resembool, Roy and Riza learn that there had been some mistake with the paperwork, and the Elric brothers are children and not men in their thirties. But they  _ are  _ talented alchemists; that much was true. Roy strides into the Elric home, somehow unshaken from his purpose. Riza follows, biting back her misgivings until later, until they are on the train home.

They don’t find the Elric brothers there. They find something terrible, instead.

-

They board the last train headed from Resembool to East City. It’s already eighteen-hundred hours; it will be late by the time they arrive back in the city. Riza sits across from Roy and wraps her arms around herself. It isn’t that the train is too cold. She’s felt this chill ever since--

“What’s wrong?”

Roy studies her, and Riza glances out the window at the passing countryside. She doesn’t know where to begin. There is  _ so  _ much that is wrong. 

“You were overly harsh with the boy.” She remembers how he grabbed the child by his collar, lifting him out of his wheelchair. Riza would have snapped at anyone else to stop that at once, but to her shame, her voice froze in her throat when she attempted to intercede. “Edward. And I’m not sure that offering him the possibility of being a State Alchemist was the right decision.” 

“I lost my temper,” Roy allows. “But he was out of line, Hawkeye.” 

“He’s a child, Lieutenant Colonel. A desperate, mourning child. His mother was all that he and his brother had.” Riza’s throat is tight. Everything about this - the genius alchemist father, the  _ absent  _ father, the young, loving mother, lost decades before her time to an illness - rubs her the wrong way. It strikes much too close to home. “You shouldn’t be so judgmental.”

“Like hell I shouldn’t.” A flicker of anger and revulsion crosses Roy’s face. “Elric didn’t just break the rules. He committed the ultimate taboo of alchemy. With all of his talent and intelligence, he should have known better than to do what he did.”

“He’s a child,” Riza repeats. She glares at him,  _ really _ glares at him, in a way she hasn’t since Ishval. Roy stiffens, evidently shaken, and her shoulders slump with remorse. She looks down at the floor. 

“I would have done the same thing, if I could,” Riza admits. It’s senseless to do so, given Roy’s earlier judgment, but she hurts so much for Edward and Alphonse and the pain and misery they went through. “If I had been able to learn anything about alchemy from my father. I spent years,  _ years,  _ wishing I had that aptitude. That I could have learned from him. If I had, I would have attempted the exact same thing Edward and his brother did, without hesitation. And I would have paid the same price.”

Roy is silent for several long moments. “I know that your inability to learn alchemy was a burden that you carried for a long while,” he says, at last. He leaves unsaid the fact that Riza’s inability to learn alchemy is what made  _ him  _ the Flame Alchemist. If things had been different, she would wear the white gloves with the red stitching. “But I’m glad that you weren’t able to learn. I’m glad that you couldn’t make the mistake Elric did, and suffer in the way he is.”

_ I wasn’t able to learn,  _ Riza thinks, as she looks at him. At her Lieutenant Colonel, the Flame Alchemist, the  _ Hero of Ishval. _ The man she loves and is devoted to, above any other. But she made a terrible mistake nevertheless, and she paid the price. The price of thousands of Ishvalan lives, a price even worse than Edward and Alphonse Elric had paid. And she will pay it for as long as she lives. 

Riza doesn’t say any of that. She just bows her head in assent. 

She thinks of Father, and Van Hohenheim, father to the Elrics, and the hideous transmutation circle in the Elric home. She thinks of Edward Elric hunched in his wheelchair and Alphonse Elric in his metal armor, and the explosions of flames in Ishval. She realizes, with shocking intensity, that she  _ hates  _ alchemy. 

-

Riza has a haircut scheduled for the Saturday after she returns from Resembool. She looks at herself in the mirror for a few moments on Wednesday morning before work, and she considers--

She has had short hair for most of her life. She hated the sensation of her long hair tickling her neck and shoulders, when she had been a little girl, and Mother took pity on her and cut it short.  _ Is that more comfortable, sweetheart?  _ Mother asked, combing her fingers through Riza’s newly, carefully cropped hair.  _ Does that feel better?  _ and Riza clung to Mother and nodded, before pressing a grateful kiss to her cheek.

Riza remembers cutting her own hair, clumsy and choppy at first, in the months after Mother died. (She finally grew more adept at eight.) She remembers combing her short hair before Father’s funeral. In the military academy. In Ishval, nearly unable to face her own reflection in the lacquered hand mirror Rebecca gave her. In the months after. 

She isn’t the same person now that she was back then. So why should she look the same? 

Riza remembers Mother, and her long, blonde locks. She remembers Winry, the little girl from Resembool, who had spoken of Edward Elric with such care and devotion. (A degree of care and devotion that had looked so familiar, felt so familiar.)

She calls and cancels her appointment. 

-

One day, while walking in the park, Riza looks back and realizes she doesn’t recognize the girl she had been at sixteen, the year Father had died. She doesn’t recognize the young woman she had been at seventeen, when she had enlisted in the military academy, and met Rebecca, and been sent to Ishval. 

At eighteen, when she had been in Ishval, and trying to cope, in the harrowing months after.

At nineteen, new to East City, and new to her unit. Still raw and bleeding from after Ishval, learning warmth and forming bonds with her new team. 

At twenty, Riza doesn’t recognize those past versions of herself. She cringes a little, when thinking of herself at seventeen and eighteen, especially, and the memories associated with those ages that she doesn’t like to revisit. But she’s not ashamed of or disgusted with the Riza she had been, that girl who had made poor decisions born out of suffering and loneliness. She pities that girl, and empathizes with her.

Riza remembers that first autumn on the unit; the month spent recovering from the burns on her back and reeling from the discovery of a grandfather she never knew she had. She remembers that first winter, and how it warmed and blossomed into spring. The transition between seasons brought with it so many changes in how she thought of Roy (how she felt about Roy). Riza remembers early summer, which had brought her a connection with the first family member outside of her parents that she has ever known.

Things settle into a comfortable, predictable routine, after that first rapid year of change. 

The routine looks like every day spent at work with a team who aren’t just her colleagues. Who aren’t just allies as devoted to the goals of their commanding officer as she is. They are friends. Not mere, casual friends, either. Friends trusted and loved to the point where, when the physician Riza sees at her annual appointment asks if she has any family, her first thought isn’t of Father (who had been her only family for so long). Her first thought is of Roy, Rebecca, Breda, Havoc, and Falman.

Riza thinks of Mother, too, and how happy Mother would be to know that for the first time in her life, she isn’t alone any longer. That she has not just one person, but several, to turn to. And Riza thinks of Grumman, whom she has grown comfortable enough with to call  _ Grandfather  _ and  _ sir  _ interchangeably. 

Grumman, who had commemorated her recent birthday with her favorite dinner. Lobster rolls, ordered from the tiny eatery on the corner of Seventh and Lake, and a vanilla cake with buttercream frosting, just like Mother used to make for her (which she mentioned to him, offhandedly, months ago). He gifted her with a pearl necklace and earring set that belonged to her grandmother. It’s far too elegant to wear on most occasions, but Riza likes to wear it for her monthly dinners at Grumman’s manor. 

That familial connection is still a secret known only to her unit and Rebecca, though. So when the physician asks her about family, Riza says, “None living.” 

-

Breda ends up in the hospital with a broken arm and fractured collarbone after one of their unit’s field operations. Havoc and Falman bring him an order of meatloaf and mashed potatoes from one of his favorite eateries, to lift his spirits after the painful re-setting and casting of the broken bones. Riza helps Breda adjust the pillows at his back and buys him a soft blanket from the hospital gift shop downstairs; one that is much warmer and more comfortable than the thin, rough blanket provided by East City General Hospital. 

Roy corners the physician assigned to Breda and interrogates him about Breda’s expected recovery and physical rehabilitation program. “Sir,” Riza whispers, attempting to urge him back from the young resident. “You need to calm yourself. You’re intimidating him.” 

Roy leaves the doctor alone, and strides over to the nurses’ station. He turns his charm up to dangerous levels as he explains that Second Lieutenant Heymans Breda is a valued subordinate, and he would be most grateful if the excellent nursing staff at East City General provided him with the best of care. He returns to Breda’s room, Riza following two steps behind, trying to stifle her inappropriate irritation at how all the nurses at the station had gazed adoringly at Roy. 

“How are you feeling, Breda?” Roy asks, folding his arms across his chest. “Are they managing your pain well?” 

Breda nods. His arm and collarbone are in an elaborate and restrictive sling, a heavy cast around his arm. “Yes, sir.”

“Good. That’s good.” There’s a muscle twitching in Roy’s jaw, a sign of unpleasant things to come. Riza sighs, preparing herself, and Falman gives her a curious look. Roy forestalls Falman’s inquiry about whether everything is quite alright by launching into a heated diatribe about how he expects his subordinates to take a better interest in their own well-being than what Breda demonstrated today. 

“The mission--” Breda starts, making the mistake of interrupting.

“There will always be other missions! There will always be second chances to apprehend perpetrators!” Roy snaps, turning a dangerous shade of red. Riza has never seen Breda, Havoc, and Falman look this alarmed before. “However, I don’t have other subordinates! Do you understand me?”

“Yes, sir,” the unit choruses, chastened. 

Roy storms out of the room without even waiting for Riza to follow. She finds him standing by the window at the end of the hallway, staring out of it, his arms folded behind his back. 

“You didn’t have to lose your temper with them.” Riza comes to stand a couple of steps behind him. “It’s been a challenging time. None of us have ever been injured in the field before.” 

Roy doesn’t back down. “It needed to be said.” He sighs, his shoulders slumping. “It could have been much worse, Hawkeye. If he had fallen on his back, rather than his arm--”

“I know, sir.” Riza looks around the hallway, ensuring they are alone. Only their solitude, and the knowledge of how distressed he is, prompts her to move to stand beside him. 

Roy rubs the back of his neck. “I’m going to update my medical documentation and name you my next of kin,” he says abruptly. 

Riza stares, stunned. Her understanding is that the designation is intended for a person’s closest living relative. Their blood family. Or their spouse. She had designated Grumman as her next of kin in her medical documentation, hoping that no physician would ever have cause to open her file to that particular page. “Lieutenant Colonel,” she stammers. “Is that appropriate?”

Roy shrugs off the question. “Chris is my next of kin right now. But she’s in Central, and often travels to West City and South City, and you’re here.”

Of course. It’s just a decision borne out of practical interests. Riza tries to relax. “Yes, sir.” 

Roy glances at her out of the corner of his eye. His voice is barely audible. “I assume Grumman is yours.”

Riza nods.

“That makes sense.” Roy looks out of the window again. “But if you wanted to add me - just in case Grumman is away, traveling to Central or elsewhere in Amestris--”

“I’ll do that, sir.” 

-

Riza goes in to update her documentation the following week. She writes in  _ Lieutenant Colonel Roy Mustang  _ into the second line underneath  _ next of kin,  _ right underneath  _ Lieutenant General Bernard Grumman _ . It’s an entirely practical gesture, nothing more, but she still shivers as she writes.

-

The routine looks like weekly dinners and weekend breakfasts and shopping trips with Rebecca. 

-

The routine looks like monthly dinners at Grumman’s manor, with Roy at her side. These dinners are long and relaxed, sitting at the large dining table, Grumman at the head, Riza at his right side, Roy beside her. The conversations veer toward personal rather than professional more often than not. Riza is somehow unsurprised to find out that Grumman and Roy’s aunt have known one another for over a decade. She is also somehow unsurprised whenever Grumman turns his questions to Roy’s future plans and looks rather unsubtly between the two of them. (They pretend not to notice this.) 

For those few hours every month, Riza enjoys putting on a nice dress, and pretending that she’s nothing more than a young woman sharing a nice dinner and pleasant evening with her grandfather and her sweetheart. 

After dinner, Roy goes into the library, as he always does, and Riza and Grumman retire to his sitting room. It is decorated even more eclectically than the study, crammed with statuettes and textiles and art pieces from around the world, all personally collected by Grumman during his travels. 

Riza has never left Amestris, save for a long weekend at a touristy coastal town in Creta with Rebecca. (It had been delightful, the brilliant blue sea and sky, their feet sinking into the white sand as they walked down the coastline. In the back of her mind, Riza felt guilty every single minute.) She loves hearing Grumman’s stories of Drachma, Aerugo, Creta, and Xing. Her grandmother Eleanor accompanied him on most of his travels, even state trips for professional purposes, after Cintra left home to marry Berthold. Grumman and Eleanor never failed to escape their guards and get into some misadventure or another. 

“You should travel, Riza,” Grumman tells her, now, as she admires one of his photographs of a temple in Xing. “I can see that there’s an adventurous spirit inside you, underneath all that workaholism. Put in a request for a couple of weeks of leave, and I can help you arrange a trip to Xing in spring.” He smiles. “You’ll get to see the cherry blossoms.”

It’s a tempting prospect, but Riza doesn’t seriously consider it. She hands the photograph back to Grumman. “Thank you, sir, but I couldn’t. I’m needed here.”

“Mustang will survive without you for two weeks. Or he could accompany you. Nobody would have to know.”

Riza nearly chokes on her wine. There’s a mischievous sparkle in Grumman’s eyes. “I don’t think so, sir. That would be entirely inappropriate. Besides, I doubt he would be interested.”

(Roy may arrive late to work on a daily basis, but he has never taken so much as a single day of leave, not even when he is sick. The words taste bitter in Riza’s mouth for another reason. Despite what Grumman might think - and what Riza suspects that even their unit might think, now that they know the truth about Vanessa and Roy’s other informants - Roy is her commanding officer and friend. Nothing more. They are close, confidants to one another, but only  _ so  _ close. He certainly wouldn’t want to vacation in Xing with her. That’s something that a boyfriend or a fiance or husband would do. Despite how she likes to play pretend for one night a month, the truth is that Roy isn’t and will never be those things to her.) 

Grumman regards her with polite doubt. “I’m not sure that’s true, my dear.”

Riza lets the comment pass, because Grumman knows about Roy’s ambitions for the future. He knows about Roy’s plan to prosecute Bradley, as well as the State Alchemists and others involved in the Ishvalan genocide. Roy confided in her, once, that it was the only time he and Grumman truly fought.  _ You intend to prosecute yourself  _ and  _ my granddaughter, Mustang? You’d have both of you face the firing squad, or rot in prison? I hope that I never live to see that day.  _

Riza knows that Grumman doesn’t support their vision for their future. She knows that he would rather see a different path for his protege (the son he never had) and his granddaughter. Grumman wants Roy as Fuhrer, wants him to have a long, successful tenure, and bring in the reforms that he feels so strongly about. He wants Bradley and his senior staff - and  _ only  _ Bradley and his senior staff - prosecuted for war crimes. And he wants her by Roy’s side as his wife, treasured and safe and happy.

It’s an impossible wish. The wish of an old man who is sentimental, deep down. The wish of an old man who has already lost his daughter and his wife, and has only one family member left living. So Riza will let him continue to carry it. 

-

They share stories of other things. Riza enjoys hearing about her grandmother Eleanor, who had been a great lover of animals. Grumman and Eleanor had two dogs during the eighteen years that Riza’s mother had lived with them. Riza smiles at the photographs of the black-and-white collie and the brown spaniel, remembering the dog stories that Mother told her when she was small. Eleanor was a patron of the animal shelters in Central City and East City, and had donated a large sum of money to the exotic animal zoo in Central. 

“The ladies in our social circles were patrons of more fashionable causes,” Grumman explains, looking at the photographs of Eleanor fondly. “The arts. Education. Children’s issues. Their eyes would glaze over when Ellie would talk about the shelters’ spaying and neutering initiatives, and the conservation efforts led by the zoo, but she truly loved her work.”

“I think she had excellent taste,” Riza says.

There’s a hint of wistfulness in Grumman’s expression. “She would have been thrilled to know that you love animals too. Riza?”

“Yes, Grandfather?”

Grumman taps his index fingers together contemplatively. “Would you like a puppy for your next birthday?”

It’s so oddly touching, so reminiscent of a question that a grandparent would ask a granddaughter of seven and not twenty, that Riza nearly cries. 

(She would love a dog. She’s always wanted a dog of her own, ever since she had been a little girl, but she doesn’t deserve a dog and the happiness and the unconditional love that they bring. So Riza tells him no, thank you, as she spends too many long hours at work and away from her apartment.) 

-

Grumman likes to hear about her experience at the military academy. “Cintra showed no interest in enlisting, even when the army decided to allow women in,” he says. “And Berthold - well. You know. So imagine my surprise when I learned about your career. And your specialty.” He laughs, the sound warm with pride. “You’re a better shot than I ever was, even in my youth.”

The academy is hard for Riza to discuss, for how it had prefaced and succeeded her tenure in Ishval. She tells Grumman about the lighter moments, like the academic classes she enjoyed, and how she was surprised to discover her own aptitude for marksmanship. How she met Rebecca, and how the two of them pushed themselves and pushed each other in their academic and physical and combat readiness classes. She even shares the story about the fight in the mess hall that she and Rebecca had gotten into with Chapman and Dobrow, and Grumman laughs and claps her on the shoulder. 

(Riza does not tell him anything else about the terrible semester after returning from Ishval. The nightmares of Father and the Ishvalan civilians and the flames. The sleepless nights spent walking around the track in the dark, with the ghosts at her back. The way the other cadets had whispered about her, taking bets on whether she’d put a gun to her head like so many other snipers had. The affair she had with her academic advisor when she was desperate for comfort. Those are the secrets and pain that she will carry to her grave.) 

\- 

Grumman never asks her about Ishval, which Riza is grateful for. He inquires, once, gently, about her childhood, about the years after Mother had passed. “I understand if you don’t…” he adds, and then trails off. He fidgets with a trinket on the side table, unable to look at her. 

Riza sits still for a few moments. The old memories, memories she does her best to keep locked away where they belong, surge up within her. It is an effort to keep her voice steady. “I think it’s best for both of us if we don’t discuss that, sir.” It will just break her own heart all over again, and his with it. 

“Of course.” Grumman’s mouth turns down at the corners. He looks sadder than Riza has ever seen him. He reaches out, and takes her hand. 

She curls her fingers around his, and tries to think of something happy, a little thing to give him, to assure him that not all of it had been bad. “The Lieutenant Colonel was kind to me,” Riza says. “Back when he was just Roy.” She stumbles on his name, which she never speaks aloud without his rank preceding it. “He used alchemy to help me with my chores around the manor and the grounds, when he could. He cleaned up the kitchen every night after I finished cooking. And he always ate dinner with me at the table.”

Riza remembers, fleetingly, the way Roy would smile at her when she set dinner down in front of him.  _ This looks good,  _ he always said.  _ Thank you.  _ It had warmed her so much; she had treasured that tiny, daily interaction. She remembers how she would spend weekends at work around Hawkeye Manor, mopping and dusting, wiping down windows, scrubbing sinks and bathtubs and toilets. Eternally tinkering with the ancient washing machine, trying to get it to work; carrying armfuls of clothes out to the clotheslines hung in the back grounds of the manor. 

She would be absorbed in her work, and then Roy would appear, pacing back and forth for a few moments as he assessed what type of transmutation would be most appropriate for her. Then he did it, sketching a transmutation circle into the ground with a stick of charcoal, and wandered off as quickly as he had appeared. 

His help had given her hours back in her days. Riza had been able to go swim in the lake, or sit in the meadow with her books, and inevitably, her thoughts drifted toward him. If someone told her that Roy Mustang was personally responsible for hanging the moon in the sky, Riza would have believed it.

Those two years, between twelve to fourteen, had been her happiest years in Hawkeye Manor after Mother had passed. Even with all the suffering that came with developing her first crush - an utterly inappropriate crush, with no hope of reciprocation - on a city boy much too old for her. 

Grumman gives her a small, pained smile, now, and Riza realizes that her words revealed more than she intended. “I’m glad to hear it, my dear.”

-

The routine looks like having more and more and more comforting thoughts and memories to hold onto at night, in an attempt to keep the nightmares at bay. 

Sometimes Riza lies awake at night, anyway.  _ You don’t deserve to feel good or happy, after what you’ve done.  _ The voice that speaks to her is her own, most times, and Father’s, sometimes.  _ You don’t deserve to heal, after what you’ve done. All you deserve, for what you did to the Ishvalans, is suffering and pain.  _

She broaches the question with Roy one night, as they are walking home from dinner and pool at the Molten Rose with the unit. It had been an enjoyable night out after the successful completion of a month-long operation to apprehend an East City drug kingpin. They had joked and laughed and drunk too much. In two surprising upsets for the night, Falman beat everyone at cutthroat, and Roy defeated Havoc in a contentious arm-wrestling match. 

They’re alone on the sidewalk; Havoc, Falman, and Breda had headed off toward their own apartments, several blocks away from where she and Roy live. The night is heavy with fog, and visibility is poor, even with the street-lamps. Riza is thankful for the reassuring weight of the gun holstered at her thigh, and for Roy’s presence beside her. (Then again, she’s comforted by Roy’s presence beside her on any night, regardless of the weather or circumstances.) 

“Do you ever feel guilty, Lieutenant Colonel?” Riza asks, during a lull in their conversation about their weekend plans. Roy is leaving for Central tomorrow morning to visit Hughes and his aunt. She and Rebecca will go out for a fancy dinner and see a show at the theatre. “About having a night like this?”

“For drinking too much? For almost getting kicked out of the bar for yelling at Havoc?” Roy smirks. “Never.” 

Riza slips her hands into the pockets of her cream-colored utility coat as they walk. They walk closer together on nights like this, when it’s just the two of them, than they do in the hallways of East City Command. Almost shoulder-to-shoulder, their arms bumping occasionally, brushing together. Riza wishes he would take her hand, one of these nights, but he never does. “For feeling happy. For being able to smile and laugh, like none of it ever happened.”

She doesn’t need to explain further. The levity fades from Roy’s expression. “You know, I asked Hughes a similar question, after we came back from Ishval. Those first few months were...bleak.”

Riza remembers her own first few months. The constant, almost tangible presence of the hundreds of ghosts at her back. The ghosts of every Ishvalan she shot, and every Ishvalan that perished in Roy’s flames. She fights the urge to shudder. 

“I don’t think I did so much as smile for the first three or four months.” Roy puts his hands into the pockets of his own coat. “And when I finally did - over some joke that Grumman made, now that I think of it - I was horrified. I went straight back to my office and called Hughes.” 

“What did he have to say?” Riza likes Hughes. She respects his devotion to Roy. At the same time, she can’t fathom how easily he had been able to get married, and be the loving, devoted husband he is, and become a father to his newborn baby girl. Hughes looks so joyful, whenever she sees him. It’s like Ishval had never happened. It’s like he had never even been there. 

Meanwhile, there are times that she can’t do so much as walk into a store and buy something nice to wear without suddenly remembering the ghosts at her back. Without thinking, viciously,  _ you don’t deserve this, you don’t deserve something nice and soft and comfortable, while the Ishvalans were piled into mass graves without even rudimentary burial shrouds, so put it back.  _ (And Riza puts the clothing back and leaves the store. It’s the reason she can only go shopping if Rebecca is with her.) 

“He said… Let me quote him. You’re walking a long road, Roy. If you continue to punish yourself every step of the way, and you don’t take moments of joy when you can, you’re likely to put a bullet through your head before you reach the end of the journey. Hell, before you reach the end of the year.” Roy smiles, but there’s a bitter tinge to it. 

“That’s wise,” Riza acknowledges. “I underestimate him, sometimes.”

“I do too. He was right.” Roy looks at her. “Do you think you would have made it this far, if you kept feeling like you did in those first six months? That first year, even? Do you think you would have survived, if you hadn’t started feeling moments of happiness again?” 

Riza rubs her arms, trying to warm herself. Finally, she shakes her head. 

“I know it’s easier said than done, Hawkeye.” Roy pauses. She hears the genuineness, the empathy and understanding, in his voice. “But try not to feel guilty for living -  _ really  _ living, and not just going through the motions like a walking corpse.” 

Riza dares to put her hand on his arm, for just a moment. Just one moment. She would never be so bold normally, but she and Havoc had taken several shots of white moonshine, and it has lowered her inhibitions. She feels Roy’s muscles twitch beneath her hand. “Thank you, sir.”

-

When Riza lies awake at night and hears the voices -  _ you don’t deserve to heal, after what you’ve done. All you deserve is suffering and pain  _ \- she closes her eyes and listens to them.

And then Riza tells herself that she needs to see this through. She needs to see Roy become Fuhrer so that he can imprison Bradley, and hold everyone involved in the Ishvalan genocide accountable for their crimes. (Bradley and the rest of the senior staff. Himself. Her.) 

The only way she will see this through, see that dream of justice lived out, fifteen years from now, or twenty, is to  _ live  _ to see it. She won’t live that long if the only things in her life are pain and suffering and guilt.

So she allows herself to heal.

-

Roy calls her into his office one afternoon in fall. “I’m thinking of recruiting someone new into our unit,” he tells her, gesturing for her to sit. “Master Sergeant Kain Fuery, a communications and surveillance specialist.”

“That’s welcome news, sir.” Roy has recently been promoted to Colonel (and Riza to First Lieutenant, along with Falman to Second Lieutenant). The promotions had been a cause for celebration for the entire unit - until they realized what it meant for their workload. More field operations at higher stakes, and more leadership and administrative responsibilities. More early mornings, and more late nights. Another team member will be helpful. “What made you consider Fuery?” 

Roy answers her question with one of his own. “Have you met him before? What do you think?”

“I’ve met him a few times, when I’ve gone over to the communications and surveillance department to prepare for our unit’s operations.” Riza thinks back to her visits. “Fuery has always been kind, and eager to help. The assistance he provided was top quality.”

“And he’s a good leader to his subordinates. They speak highly of him.” Roy twirls his pen through his fingers thoughtfully. “He’s the best I’ve seen here at East City, actually, outside of Grumman and our own unit. Which is impressive, for a twenty-two year old.” 

Riza smiles. “That reminds me of someone else I know. I think Fuery would be a fine addition to our unit.”

Roy practically preens, running a hand through his hair. “Why, thank you, Hawkeye. Could you get the paperwork started, when you get a chance?”

-

Personnel transfers between departments and units are a ridiculously laborious business involving mountains of paperwork. They usually take at least a month to complete. Riza finalizes the documentation in a week. 

She walks into the office at seven-hundred hours on Monday morning. She’s normally the first one in for at least thirty minutes, so Riza is surprised to see the blinds pulled open, early morning sunlight streaming into the room. Master Sergeant Fuery stands at the empty desk that had been delivered on Friday afternoon, setting things out from the overflowing box resting on his chair. It doesn’t look like he had bought any personal effects - rather, an enormous collection of various radios and wires. 

He sees her and nearly jumps out of his skin, whirling and offering a sharp salute. “Good morning, Lieutenant Hawkeye!” 

Riza gives him a small smile, trying to set him at ease. “Good morning, Fuery. At ease - we’re not so formal here. Welcome to the unit.”

“I’m glad to be here, Lieutenant.” Fuery looks at her earnestly, pushing his glasses a little higher on his nose. “Can I help you with anything this morning?”

Riza shakes her head. “There’s no need. Focus on getting your things unpacked, and we can start your orientation when you’re done.” 

“Yes, Lieutenant!”

Riza sits at her desk and sorts through her paperwork, dividing it up into three neat piles. Things she can work on later in the week, matters she needs to address today, and documents that need Roy’s attention. 

She glances over her shoulder to check on Fuery’s progress. The box is empty, stowed under his desk, and almost every square inch of the desk is covered with communications equipment. Fuery is straightening a small, framed photograph, of a man and a woman with dark hair and glasses similar to his. They stand in a park beside a large black dog, the dog’s muzzle grown gray with age. All three are beaming, the humans and the dog alike.

“That’s a lovely photo,” Riza says, because she remembers what it had felt like to be the newcomer to this unit, and to her sniper team. She remembers what it had been like to be alone at the Academy, keeping to herself as she watched and listened to the others interacting, in the time before a fellow cadet complimented her on her marksmanship. 

Fuery turns, surprised, and grins. “My parents and my dog, Sandy. They live in Central.” 

“They look very happy. How old is Sandy?” 

“Sixteen,” Fuery replies, with no small amount of awe. “We’ve had her since I was a kid. She just showed up at our front door one day.” 

“What a gift.” Riza smiles. “You must miss her a great deal.”

“I do.” Fuery picks the photograph up and studies it wistfully. “It would be great to have a pet, but my apartment doesn’t allow them. Do you like dogs, Lieutenant Hawkeye?”

They end up talking about dogs - pet dogs, military dogs, service dogs - for the better part of half an hour, until Falman arrives. Riza decides that she likes Fuery.

-

Edward Elric passes the State Alchemist certification exam later that year, earning a rank equivalent to Major, and falling under Roy’s command. Fuhrer Bradley deems him the  _ Fullmetal Alchemist.  _ Within the week, talk spreads like wildfire about the Fullmetal Alchemist, the prodigy, the youngest person to ever become a State Alchemist. 

“I know you’re not happy about it, Hawkeye,” Roy says to her, the evening before Edward’s first official day on the unit. They’re working late, working through a takeout dinner. 

“I still don’t believe the military is the place for a child, Colonel.” Riza looks away. They have had this conversation before, and talked in circles around one another. It is the rarest of occasions that they don’t see eye to eye. “Will you consider something for me?” 

It’s rare that she requests anything of him, outside of the basics of doing his paperwork, and refraining from doing anything risky or idiotic in the field. Roy raises an eyebrow, but his reply comes without hesitation. “Anything.”

Riza knows that it’s ridiculous for her to project like this. To be so fearful. But when she saw Edward Elric head off to Central with Roy - so very young, so determined, such hunger in his eyes, something inside her clenched up tight.  _ They’ll use you,  _ Riza thought.  _ They’ll take advantage of your capabilities. They’ll use you for whatever atrocities they see fit, and they won’t give a damn about what it does to you afterward.  _

“Will you consider keeping Edward away from Central?” she asks. “Away from the Fuhrer’s notice, as much as you can?” 

Roy hands her the report in front of him, by way of reply. Riza scans it. “A preliminary investigation into suspected gang activity in Meox?” 

“A fine first field assignment for a new recruit, don’t you think?” Roy gestures toward a thick manila folder hanging half off the edge of his desk. “I have the next six months’ worth of assignments for him, all over the East. Fullmetal should never have to set foot in Central. Hell, between his assignments and the time between each mission that I promised him, so that he can explore his leads on the Philosopher’s Stone, he’ll barely be here in East City.” 

Riza inclines her head, feeling gratitude wash over her. “Thank you, sir.” 

-

Riza spends most of the next morning out in the field with Breda and Havoc. They head off for an early lunch at the mess immediately after returning, but she declines their offer to join them. It’s almost noon, and there’s something she wants to attend to. 

She heads up to the office. It’s empty, save for Edward and Alphonse, sitting on the sofa, bent over the folder containing their mission briefing. They look up at her, startled, when she enters. Both rise to their feet and salute. Edward awkwardly, Alphonse with a surprising amount of grace. It is kind, even though neither of them owe her the gesture, as Alphonse is a civilian and Edward is higher-ranking than her. “Lieutenant Hawkeye,” the boys greet, in unison. 

“Major Elric, Alphonse.” Riza smiles. “At ease.”

They relax, though Edward turns red. “Just Edward is fine, Lieutenant Hawkeye,” he says, a bit stiffly.

“Very well, Just Edward.”

Riza keeps her expression as straight and serious as she can. It has the desired effect. Alphonse giggles. The sound is so sweet and innocent, coming from the massive suit of armor, that it breaks her heart. A slow, reluctant smile spreads over Edward’s face. 

“I see the Colonel’s given you your mission briefing.” She sits across from them. “Do you have any questions?” 

Edward shakes his head. “I don’t think so.”

Riza takes out the card that she tucked into her pocket this morning and offers it to him. “If anything comes up while you’re away, please don’t hesitate to call me. No question or concern is too small.”

“Thanks.” Edward seems taken aback by the gesture. He looks over the card, and then pockets it. He had eschewed the military uniform in favor of the red coat she’s seen him wearing in the past. 

Riza glances out the window. It’s gray and overcast, threatening rain, and she makes up her mind. “Will you wait here for a moment, please?”

They agree, and she rises, making her way to Roy’s office. He’s on the phone, and Riza stops by the doorway.  _ Keys?  _ she mouths.

Roy fishes his car keys out from the pocket of his coat and tosses them at her. Riza catches them deftly, whispers her thanks, and rejoins Edward and Alphonse outside. They’re standing up, Edward checking the locks on his suitcase as they prepare to depart. They look up at her curiously when she comes to stand beside them. 

“Come on,” Riza says. “I’ll drive you two to the station. It looks like it’s going to rain.”

Edward gives her an expression of frank confusion, and Alphonse stammers. “Oh! You don’t have to do that, Lieutenant. We can go by ourselves.”

They have the demeanor, the sense of independence, of children used to fending for themselves years before they should. Riza takes a deep breath, and stifles brief flashes of memory, of walking back from the market in the rain, unable to clutch an umbrella and carry her basket of groceries at the same time. She forces a smile. “It’s fine. I have an errand to run for the Colonel in that part of the city anyway.”

That convinces them. She leads them to the parking lot behind East City Command, ignoring the stares of the other soldiers they pass in the hallway. Edward bristles at the attention, and Riza directs reproving looks at anyone who gapes at Alphonse and Edward too blatantly.

Thankfully, Alphonse fits into the backseat of the car - though it is a tight fit. Edward flings himself into the passenger seat, running a hand over the fine upholstery. “Nice,” he murmurs. “I’d kind of like one of these someday. Then Al and I wouldn’t have to deal with late trains and all the random connections.”

“And missed connections!” Al pipes up, from the backseat. 

“And weird smells,” Ed says, with great feeling. “And uncomfortable seats.”

“Do you travel often?” Riza twists the keys in the ignition, and the car purrs to life. 

“Yeah, between Resembool and Dublith. And we’ll travel a lot more now that we have the ability to look for the Philosopher’s Stone.” Ed sits up straighter, his enthusiasm evident. 

“Have you ever been to Meox?” Riza asks.

“Never.” Al hunches in the backseat, trying to maneuver into a more comfortable position. 

The roads are relatively free of traffic, and Riza checks the clock. “Be very careful in any areas west of the Warehouse District. There’s an excellent noodle shop a few minutes away from the train station, at Main Street and Belmont. The Copper Hotel is comfortable, and the staff is kind, as well. And if you end up staying for the weekend, the Meox Symphony does free evening concerts at Central Park on Saturday nights.” 

Edward smiles, less reluctantly than he had before. “Thanks.”

Riza stops at the corner of Seventh and Lake. “I’ll be right back,” she says. 

She ducks out, and into the tiny eatery on the corner, the Sweet Spring Lunchroom. Thankfully, it’s not crowded, despite the proximity to the lunch hour. The lady standing behind the counter beams at her. “Ah, Lieutenant! Should I get your usual?”

“Two today, please, Mrs. Sebenius.” Riza scans the menu mounted to the wall. “Could you add one bag of chips and one chocolate chip cookie to both of the orders?”

“Of course, dear.”

Mrs. Sebenius disappears into the back. Within a couple of minutes, she returns, holding two fragrant brown bags. Riza thanks her profusely, pays, and slides her change into the tip jar, before heading outside. She can smell the rain in the air now. 

“Here,” she says, once she’s back in the car. Riza hands one bag to Edward and one bag to Alphonse. 

They accept the bags, Alphonse with some hesitation, and Edward peers into his. “That smells  _ really  _ good.”

“They’re lobster rolls. There’s a meal service on the train, but their sandwiches leave something to be desired,” Riza explains, a little self-consciously. “I thought these would hold you over better, for your journey.”

“You’re very kind, Lieutenant,” Alphonse says. Edward is already munching on his cookie, as he nods fervently in agreement, but Alphonse keeps his brown bag closed.

They arrive at the station after a short drive, the brothers peppering her with questions about where else in the East she’s traveled, and what kind of field operations she does. Edward purchases two tickets for the next train to Meox, departing in five minutes. The train is already at the station, people filing into each car. 

“Be safe,” Riza says. She pats Edward on the shoulder, and she would do the same to Alphonse, but his shoulder is so high up. She pats the cool metal of his arm instead, and the realization that he must not feel touch makes her chest constrict. She craved touch so much, growing up. So much it hurt. Part of her still craves it in the same way. 

“We will,” Alphonse replies earnestly. “And we’ll call you if we need anything.”

“Yeah, I’d definitely rather call you than the Colonel,” Edward mutters, pulling a face. 

Riza laughs. “He’s not that bad.”

“Sure. Take care, Lieutenant Hawkeye. And thanks for the lunches.”

They wave to her, and Riza watches as the train departs. She sighs, and returns to the car. The drive back to East City Command feels a little quiet and lonely without the brothers’ chatter. 

Riza heads back up to the office. Falman, Fuery, Breda, and Havoc are still out, and Roy is where she left him at his desk. He glances up when she enters. “You’ve been gone for a while.”

“Thank you for the keys, sir.” Riza rests them on his desk. “I appreciate it.” 

“Anytime.” Roy yawns, taking a sip of his coffee. “What were you up to?”

“I took the Elric brothers to the station and bought them some lunch for their trip.”

“You--” Roy blinks at her. “You didn’t have to do all of that.”

Riza shrugs, feeling her face warm. “I know.”

“He’s the  _ Fullmetal Alchemist _ , Hawkeye. And his brother is in an eight-foot tall suit of armor. They’re perfectly capable of taking care of themselves. You don’t have to mother them.” 

Riza almost flinches at the word. (She looks at herself in the mirror, now, when her hair is loose around her shoulders, and she sees Mother looking back at her. It is beautiful and painful at the same time. 

She looks at babies and toddlers held in their parents’ arms, on the train or in the park or in cafes, and she looks at children at play in the park, or walking together in groups, talking and laughing. And something in her feels tight and painful, like the scars on her back get when it’s hot outside. Riza always assumed it was envy she felt, when she saw parents holding their children close, talking to them lovingly. Envy of other children who got to be loved and treasured in a way she had only been for a few short years. 

Maybe it was envy,  _ but maybe it’s not the children you’re envious of,  _ something inside her whispers, and Riza silences it. She allowed herself to heal, but she won’t allow herself to be self-indulgent. There are certain things she doesn’t deserve, and certain things that will never be possible for her. 

Still, Riza wants to be loved. She always has. And she also wants  _ to _ love _ ,  _ to nurture and protect. Just the simple act of buying sandwiches for the Elric brothers had made her feel warm inside.)

“Yes,” Riza replies evenly. “I know that they’re perfectly capable of taking care of themselves. That doesn’t mean they should always have to.”

Roy’s gaze lingers on her, and Riza sees a flicker of sadness cross his face, so quickly she could have blinked and missed it. 

“What is it, Colonel?”

Roy shakes his head, after a moment. “Nothing. You didn’t get a chance to eat something, did you?” 

“Not yet.” Riza thinks longingly of the lunches she had bought for Edward and Alphonse. She should have picked up an extra two, one for herself and one for Roy. 

“Come with me, then.” Roy stands. “I haven’t either.”

They walk over to Seventh and Lake, and he buys her a lobster roll. 

-

Roy calls her into his office later that week. Literally. He calls the telephone at her desk and asks her to come see him, rather than getting up and walking across his office to request her presence. Riza acquiesces, rolling her eyes as she does so. 

She finds her commanding officer sitting at his desk, surrounded by a mountain of files, looking rather beleaguered. They have been assisting the Military Police with some of the paperwork relating to the Barry the Chopper case in recent weeks.

“Grumman wants me to attend a dinner meeting in Xing with a member of his network - a General Huang - on his behalf,” he says, without preamble. “It’s on the thirtieth of the month. You’ll accompany me. We’ll leave on the twenty-seventh, we’ll spend two full days in Suzhao, and we’ll factor in another two days for our return trip.”

Riza closes her eyes and exhales slowly through her nose. She thinks back to her conversation after dinner with Grumman some months ago.  _ You should travel, Riza. I can help you arrange a trip to Xing. Mustang could survive without you for a couple of weeks. Or he could even accompany you. Nobody would have to know.  _

Her grandfather is a sly old fox. He’s probably sitting in his office right now, chuckling to himself as he enjoys his lunch. If she didn’t have to worry about keeping their familial relationship discreet, she would go over there right now and tell him exactly what she thinks of this unsubtle attempt at matchmaking. 

Roy studies her, apparently concerned. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine, sir,” Riza forces out. “It’s just - six days out of the office. I’ll have to rearrange your schedule, and mine.” 

“Chin up, Hawkeye,” Roy tosses his pen up in the air and catches it, seeming to forget his paperwork-related struggles. “It’s a big deal, representing Grumman at an event abroad. Even though it’s not a formal state dinner. He’s never entrusted me with something like this before - just standing in for him at some meetings in Central.”

Riza bites the inside of her cheek to refrain from muttering something about Grumman’s ulterior motives. It is nice to see how happy it makes Roy, though. She enjoys seeing him like this. “It is, sir.”

“Besides…” Roy smiles, and it makes her breath stutter in her chest. “We get to go to Xing. You know that I’ve always wanted to visit. Now we have the chance.” 

Riza goes back to her desk. Despite her best efforts to stay focused as she reorganizes their schedules for the month, her train of thought keeps drifting to Xing with Roy.

-

Riza has seen photographs of Xing, in Grumman’s albums, in museums, in textbooks. They had been in black-and-white, usually, and they captured the capital city or the countryside, or the vast, towering mountains. She’s never seen a photograph of Suzhou. In any case, she doubts that any photograph could do the city justice. 

They couldn’t capture the rich, heavy scent of the incense and floral offerings at the entrance to the temples on every street. Or the scent of the blossoms on the pink mimosa trees that line every avenue, as they mingle with the aroma of the wares of the street food vendors’ stalls. They couldn’t capture the ethereal color of the blue wisteria trees, or the startling orange pistache trees, or the sharp points and graceful curves of the temple roofs. They wouldn’t pick up the shimmering gold and all the shades of jade and the bright pink, blue, red, and yellow pigments that make up the statuettes inside the temples and the elaborate art inlaid into the walls.

Every street is a juxtaposition of new and old. Train stations, schools, apartment buildings, hotels, and eateries and cafes sit alongside ancient, carefully preserved temples, large and small. Despite all of Riza’s experience as a bodyguard, it’s a struggle to remain focused on her task as she and Roy explore the city in the hours before dinner at General Huang’s manor. Riza is thankful that they prepared for the dinner meeting extensively on the convoy ride over here, leaving some time for leisure when they arrived.  _ We are not going to cram at the last minute in our hotel,  _ she lectured Roy, who blew a stray lock of hair out of his eyes and gave her a distinctly rebellious scowl. 

Roy is just as fascinated by their surroundings as she is. He stops dead in the middle of walking down the street, looking into shop windows displaying brightly colored Xingese fabrics, or porcelain vases, or miniature statues of the gods, or wall scrolls. “Hawkeye, look,” he says to her, a dozen times over, pointing out this or that. 

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this excited, sir,” Riza comments, as they leave a bookstore. Roy carries a bag containing a book on the language and culture of Xing, for him, and a biography on Empress Chuntao of the Cheng dynasty, for her.

“I didn’t think I would get to come here until I became Fuhrer. It’s not exactly easy to book travel between Amestris and Xing.” Roy pauses mid-step, eyeing a noodle stall across the street with interest. “I just wish we had more time and we could go further afield. My mother was from the capital city, and that’s almost an entire day’s travel from here.”

Ever since Riza had gotten to know Grumman, the two of them have talked, on occasion, about Roy’s maternal family.  _ Do I have grandparents?  _ he asked her once, while driving back from dinner at Grumman’s manor.  _ Aunts, uncles, cousins?  _ She can see the quiet yearning in his expression, hear it in his tone. She stifles the temptation to put a comforting hand on his arm. “When you’re Fuhrer,” she says.

“Hmm.” Roy sounds unconvinced. “How would you feel about taking a few more days away from the office, Hawkeye?” 

“I wish we could.” The words are too honest. Riza averts her eyes from him, scanning the street for any potential threats or developing situations. They’re both in civilian clothing, but Amestrian civilian clothing still stands out here, making them potential targets. 

(She wishes that they  _ could _ take a few weeks away, and explore Xing, and walk arm-in-arm through the streets. Here, this far away from East City Command, from  _ Amestris, _ they don’t have to be the Colonel and his Lieutenant, a commanding officer and his subordinate. They could just be Roy and Riza.) 

Roy leads her into a succession of temples dedicated to various gods, and they stand in respectful silence in front of the enormous iron braziers, taking it all in. Riza knows that Roy is very rarely religious - only when he perceives some threat to his subordinates - but he regards the temple interiors thoughtfully. The frown lines that mark his brow soften. The expression in his dark eyes is a little less intense; a little more peaceful. 

Riza realizes that she’s staring. She looks away, back at the swirls of incense smoke as they drift toward the sky. 

-

The dinner with General Huang and his friends is an incredible success. Roy charms them with his easy smile and earnest interest in their opinions, and impresses them with his intelligence and political acumen. The generals are intrigued by his family background, as well, asking him what clan his mother had a connection to.

To Riza’s surprise, General Huang tells her that her grandfather mentions her often in his letters. “He says that you’re a dutiful soldier, a fierce fighter, and that you have your mother’s gentle heart,” Huang quotes. 

Riza bows her head and murmurs her thanks at the praise, saying that her grandfather is kind, and Roy smiles. “The Lieutenant General is absolutely correct, as always.” 

They leave after four hours of discussion, politely declining the General’s offer of having his driver drop them off at their hotel, citing their desire to see the city at night. It’s only a thirty-minute walk along the Xiang River, but they take their time, admiring the colored lanterns hung outside homes and in the trees that line the path alongside the river. 

It’s a cool, quiet night. They converse softly as they walk, debriefing from the dinner, and Riza periodically looks over her shoulder to ensure that they aren’t being followed. She hears faint strains of music coming from the night markets a couple of blocks away. General Huang had insisted that the two of them make time to visit one the following evening. 

“I don’t say this often, but I couldn’t feel better about how that went.” Roy stops, looking down at the river. Someone had released two dozen floating lanterns somewhere farther upstream. They drift down the dark water, squares of soft golden light. “That’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

Riza comes to a stop beside him, joining him at the railing. They’re close enough that she can feel the warmth of his arm beside hers. The side of her left hand and his right barely brush. “I agree,” she says. It’s reckless, but she leaves the  _ Colonel,  _ the  _ sir,  _ off the end of the sentence. She doesn’t want him to remember their ranks. She doesn’t want him to remember that he’s her commanding officer. “On both counts.”

Roy shifts, moving half a step closer, still gazing at the slow progression of the lanterns down the river. Riza watches them, and breathes in the sweet scent of the pink mimosa blossoms, and hears the faint sound of the zithers and erhus being strummed over at the night market. 

It’s inappropriate, but she  _ wants _ , so hard, so much, on this perfect night in Suzhao. Riza longs for it with the same intensity she had once longed for touch. She wants Roy to take a step closer. To reach out, and cradle the side of her head in his hand, prompting her to look up at him. She wants him to call her by her name. She wants him to lean in and kiss her, soft and sweet and gentle at first, and then harder, as she wraps her hands in the lapels of his coat.

She had her first kiss under the desert sky, in the blood-soaked sands of Ishval, and she’s kissed a dozen men since then. She never wanted any of those kisses as much as she wants this, right here and right now. 

_ Please,  _ Riza thinks. 

She stays still. She won’t make the first move. She can’t cross that line. She isn’t the same girl who had wrapped her fingers around Reid’s wrist and led him into her tent; the same girl who had looked up at Bresler with pleading eyes. She has no idea if Roy wants the same thing she does, and she won’t force an attempt at seduction on him. She cares about him, respects him (loves him) too much to put him in a position where he has to reject her advances. But if he does want what she wants, if he crosses that line, she’ll gladly cross it with him.

The lanterns finally drift out of sight.

Roy sighs, drawing his coat closer around himself. “Come, Hawkeye,” he says. “It’s late. We should get back.”

-

They go back to their ridiculously posh hotel. To their neighboring, separate rooms. Roy wishes her good night, around an enormous yawn. Riza does the same for him.

She goes into her room and locks the door behind her. She walks around the bathroom, all gilding and mirrors and enormous soaking tub. She steps onto the balcony, with its stunning view of the lit-up city. Riza rests her hands on the railing. She can’t help but remember her first thought, when she had seen the balcony earlier, when they had checked in. She can’t help but remember the image in her mind’s eye, of her standing on the balcony with Roy, his arm wrapped around her, her head nestled against his shoulder.

Longing and sorrow rises in her like bile, threatening to choke her. Riza goes inside, and sits on the bed (the bed, she noted earlier, that was big enough for two), and cries a little.

-

She does not allow her disappointment at the confirmation of Roy’s feelings, or lack thereof, to cloud their remaining day in Suzhou. (Because that’s what it had been. It had been the perfect moment, the perfect opportunity, if he  _ did  _ feel for her what she felt for him, to show it. But he hadn’t, and that is all she needs to know.) 

Riza enjoys their day of sightseeing, and the night market with Roy the following evening. The biography of Empress Chuntao entertains her over the long journey back to Amestris, as does writing detailed descriptions of everything she had seen in Suzhao in the travel journal she and Rebecca had bought while in Creta. Beside her, Roy studies his book on the language of Xing, occasionally murmuring new words to himself. 

-

They get back to the office on Monday. Riza spends the day struggling to catch up on all the work that had piled up in her absence, and fielding eager questions about Xing from the unit and Rebecca. 

(Rebecca marches up to their unit’s table at lunch, takes her by the arm, and leads her to a table on the far side of the mess hall.  _ Did anything happen?  _ she asks, in an undertone. For once, Riza knows better than to feign misunderstanding of her best friend’s meaning. She shakes her head. Rebecca rolls her eyes at the sky and vehemently pronounces Mustang the lowest tier of idiot.) 

Riza returns from Major Rippe’s office at eighteen-hundred hours, carrying an armful of paperwork. Everyone else in the unit has left for the day, except Roy, who is hunched over his desk in his office, reluctantly catching up on his own work. 

Something on her desk captures her attention. A small, nondescript brown box, sitting on top of a stack of surveillance transcriptions. There is no card or note accompanying it. 

Riza sets her paperwork down and sits at her desk, intrigued. She assumes it’s something from Grumman; he’s the only person who would leave her an unmarked gift. She opens the box, and she goes still.

A jeweled hair comb of Xingese design lies carefully nestled in folds of tissue paper. The tines are golden; the gems are a warm, sparkling citrine. Riza lifts the comb free of the box, stunned. She had noted these ornaments in the hair of the women she saw in Xing, admiring the contrast between their ink-black locks and the shine of emeralds, rubies, sapphires. And it strikes her that she’s seen a comb like this once before, before she had ever set foot in Xing. 

She remembers Roy’s carved jade box of keepsakes of his parents, housed in his childhood bedroom in Chris Mustang’s bar. The yellowing photograph. His father’s university pin. His mother’s jeweled hair comb, sparkling with tiny emeralds and diamonds. 

It’s only then that Riza catches sight of the folded sheet of memo paper tucked at the bottom of the box, under the layer of tissue paper. She sets the comb down carefully, reverently, and opens the note. It’s characteristic of all of Roy’s memos; brief and terse. 

_ Hawkeye - thank you for accompanying me to Xing.  _

It’s unsigned. Even without the context, she would recognize that handwriting anywhere. (He had taught her how to forge his writing and signature, after all, despite her protests that such a thing was unethical.)

Riza takes the comb in her hand. It’s stupid and childish, but her heart is racing. She takes a few deep breaths, slowing it, as she had been taught during her sniper training.

She doesn’t misunderstand the intentions of this gift. It is a token of appreciation, nothing more. Roy bought things for everyone in the unit while they had been in Xing. It’s true that this is lavish,  _ very  _ generous, and could be taken the wrong way if someone outside of the unit learned that a Colonel purchased something so nice for his young, female subordinate. But Riza remembers that Grumman is Roy’s mentor, and Grumman is in the habit of giving expensive end-of-year gifts and tokens of appreciation to everyone on his staff, male and female alike, regardless of the gossip it sparks around East City Command. 

Perhaps it would be wise to demur and return it. This is something that couldn’t be worn at work, and nobody can ever know the origins of the gift, anyway. But Riza’s fingers close tighter around the comb at the thought. Maybe it’s foolish, but she doesn’t  _ want  _ to return it. 

Then she stands, and makes her way to Roy’s office, glancing inside. The Colonel is sitting back at his desk, staring at the report he’s holding before him as if he doesn’t quite see it. “Sir?”

Roy looks up with a start. “Hawkeye. Come in.”

Riza comes to stand before his desk, and she tries to be as stoic as she normally is at work. “Thank you for the comb, Colonel. It’s very pretty.”

Roy shuffles his paperwork, not quite making eye contact with her. “I’m glad you like it. I thought, with your hair being longer…”

He trails off, and Riza tries not to smile. Roy alone, out of all the members of her unit, and Rebecca, and Grumman, hadn’t commented on or asked about her change in hairstyle. A tiny part of her had been disappointed; wondering if he even noticed. 

Riza thanks him again, and departs, returning to her work.

-

She doesn’t wear the comb at work, or on nights out with her unit. Riza wears it to dinner at Grumman’s manor, admiring how the gems catch the light as she slides it into her hair.

(Roy picks her up as he always does, and comments casually that the amber suits her eyes. Grumman remarks that it’s a lovely piece, with the fine craftsmanship characteristic of authentic Xingese jewelry. Riza agrees without elaboration, and Grumman has enough tact not to press further.) 

* * *

_to be continued_   
  


* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had a lot of fun writing this chapter. I hope that you enjoyed reading! I'd love to know what you thought - comments and kudos are always so appreciated. 
> 
> Additionally, I am on tumblr @lantur if you would like to connect. :)


	7. seven

Riza learned how to play chess with Rebecca in the Academy. She plays mostly with Grumman, Roy, Breda, and Falman, these days, as Rebecca doesn’t have much patience for the game. _It’s not exactly fun, Riza,_ she huffs, rubbing her temples. _It feels like work._

Riza loses to Grumman every time. She’s evenly matched with Breda and Falman for wins and losses. She and Roy end up in stalemates more often than either of them manage to eke out a victory over the other. 

The months pass, and Riza feels stuck in a stalemate. An impasse. 

She spends enough time with Roy that she can predict what he will say, and how he will say it, (and what facial expression he will make _as_ he says it) in any given situation, real or hypothetical. She spends enough time with him that she can guess at what he’s thinking, as well. Riza spends enough time with him that the scent of his aftershave and shampoo are more familiar to her than her own bath products. Sometimes her uniform coat even smells faintly like Roy, like spice and smoke. 

They visit Madame Christmas’s bar whenever they go to Central. When Chris Mustang and Vanessa introduce her to new informants as _Roy’s Elizabeth,_ Roy doesn’t say a word to correct them. 

The unit refers to them in the same breath, Mustang-and-Hawkeye, or “those two” or for short, in the same faintly affectionate tone one would use when discussing a married couple. Grumman is similar, as are Hughes and Gracia, who invite them over for dinner when work takes them to Central. Riza sits in the living room with Roy, Hughes, and Gracia, and she and Roy take turns holding Elicia before her bedtime. (Riza loves holding Elicia, more than she can say. More than she can even acknowledge to herself. She sits on the sofa with Elicia cuddled against her, Roy at her other side, a careful distance apart, and it’s so bittersweet that it makes her chest ache.)

They have dinner together in the office a few nights a week. They walk home together after nights out with the unit when they’re too drunk to drive.

They continue their tradition of monthly dinners with Grumman. When Roy drops her off at her apartment at the end of the night, they lean against the door as they continue to talk. Every time, Riza considers inviting him inside, using an offer of a cup of tea as a pretext. Every time, she can’t summon up the nerve. 

“Just make a move,” Rebecca urges her, over dinner one night at her apartment. “He can’t do it, because he’s your boss and he doesn’t want to be that creep who coerces his subordinate into bed. So you’ll have to.” 

Riza shakes her head, picking at her chicken and dumplings. “I can’t.”

“Why?” Rebecca asks, exasperated. “You can’t seriously think that he doesn’t want you.” 

“I don’t know.” Riza sighs, setting her fork down. “I can understand how other people might assume that he does. But I know Roy. He loves all of us, and Hughes too. I won’t be so arrogant as to assume that he cares for me in a different way than he cares for any of them.” 

Rebecca raises an eyebrow. “He’s devoted one Saturday night a month, for _years_ , to hanging out with you and your grandfather. I’ve had boyfriends who refused to do as much for me.”

Riza shrugs. “Roy would help out any of the rest of the unit in the same way, if they needed that of him. It just happens to be me who does need that of him. That’s the kind of person he is.” 

“Do you really think that?” Rebecca asks bluntly.

Riza glances down at her plate. “I do.”

“I can’t judge you too much, I guess.” Rebecca spears a dumpling with her fork. “I know I talk a big game, but I’d think twice about going after my commanding officer too. It’s everything that we’re told _not_ to do, as female soldiers.” 

“Exactly.” Riza hesitates. “And… It’s hard to explain.”

“Try me.” 

Riza pauses, trying to find the words. The right way to describe her proximity to Roy. The thousand tiny intimacies they share on a daily basis. The respect and tenderness and consideration they show one another. The many small, soft moments when they anticipate one another’s needs and meet them before they’re ever expressed out loud. Whether it’s a mundane need relating to work, or something deeper, like the need for reassurance, comfort, or support. 

“What I have with him,” Riza starts, carefully, and her cheeks burn as she speaks. “It’s one of the two most precious relationships I have in my life. It’s something delicate and special. I don’t want anything to jeopardize that. I - I can’t bear the thought of anything disrupting that, Rebecca.”

Rebecca tilts her head to the side in silent understanding. “I get it,” she says. “I hope that one day Mustang gets up the courage to take things to the next level, then. I mean, you’re already practically a couple, you just don’t sleep--”

Riza sets her glass of water down with a _thunk_ on the table, and Rebecca coughs, flustered. “Sorry.” She recovers, and grins. “One of the two most precious relationships you have in your life, huh? Wow, Riza, I didn’t know that you held Havoc in such high regard!”

Riza rolls her eyes, and Rebecca dissolves into laughter.

-

 _This is enough,_ Riza thinks, every time she has one of the moments, one of the conversations, one of the many little interactions with Roy that she treasures so quietly and privately. _This is enough._ She’s been physical with so many men, and none of them had made her feel what Roy does. _Truly_ loved and accepted, and safe, and special. 

Most of the time, it is enough. But sometimes, it isn’t, and that _sometimes_ is enough to leave Riza feeling like she’s on the cusp of being driven mad. 

It drives her nearly to the point of breaking her long streak of good behavior. She’s always sought out physical intimacy solely to feed her need (her need-bordering-starvation) for comfort and touch and affection and reassurance. She wanted to be held and caressed and cuddled, to have kisses pressed to her cheeks and forehead, to be called good and perfect and sweetheart. And she knew no other way to have that need for touch and affection met except for sex. Finding family in Rebecca, her unit, and Grumman, and becoming less lonely, and _healing,_ brought with it a sharp lessening of that intense, visceral, physical hunger.

This time, what makes Riza want physical intimacy is frustration. A frustration too deep and painful to describe. And there’s still loneliness, underneath it all. She has the love of her friends, and her grandfather, which is more than she had for years. But she doesn’t have the kind of love that part of her still yearns for, with the man she yearns for.

Riza gets as far as looking at herself in her bathroom mirror as she finishes touching up her cosmetics. She straightens the hem of her skirt, much shorter than anything she’d ever wear to the office or in broad daylight. She lets her hair down from its clip, tousling it.

Roy might not want to rub his thumb over her knuckles, and trace his fingertips against the inside of her wrist. He might not want to kiss her in the back of a bar, his hands in her hair, her back against the wall. He might not want to call her _gorgeous_ , and skim the backs of his fingers against her cheekbones, and take her home with him. But there are other men who would. 

All the breath leaves Riza’s body in a sigh, and she turns her back to the mirror. 

There are other men who would. And she knows that all _she_ will do is think of Roy as she strips her clothes off, as she presses herself against her choice for the night and kisses him hard. She’s done that just once before, back when she had thought that Vanessa was Roy’s girlfriend and not his informant. It was satisfying in the moment, and she felt awful afterwards. 

Riza turns off the lights and lies down in bed, curling up in a ball around a pillow clutched to her front. Restlessness and frustration course through her, leaving her aching and hollow and desperate. She’s been desperate for a man’s touch before, but that was just for the sake of being comforted. It hadn’t been a craving like _this._ She hadn’t desired the men themselves. She had just wanted the validation they could give to her. 

Riza thinks of the breadth and strength of Roy’s shoulders, and the way his dress clothes fit over his chest. She thinks of his dark eyes, his hands, his voice. Even his hair, long and sometimes unruly and begging to be tousled. Riza remembers compliments given - _you look lovely; the amber suits your eyes; that’s a nice dress on you._ She imagines what he’d say if he saw her in a skirt this short, lying in bed, her hair loose around her shoulders, almost breathless, thinking of him.

 _Hawkeye -_ and Roy would look at her in the speculative way he does sometimes. Except now he would look her up and down, from the top of her head to the tips of her bare toes. _Do you want some help with that?_

-

Riza lies on her back, afterwards, feeling a little dazed.

Physical gratification has never been the point of her affairs, just a convenient side effect. It’s ironic, considering everything ( _everyone,_ Riza can’t help but think, dryly, ironically) she had done between seventeen and twenty, but she never really had much of a sex drive. That hadn’t been the thing that motivated her to seek companionship. 

She should probably be humiliated about what she has just done. It’s something she hasn’t done before, and it seems even more sordid, because it’s _Roy._ Since moving to East City, the pull she felt toward him, her attraction to him, had been something more pure, innocent, almost chaste, than the comfort she’s sought with other men. Riza hadn’t wanted, hadn’t thought of, more than just exchanging kisses and being held. This changes things, and she blushes at the thought of facing her Colonel on Monday morning. 

But Riza stares at the ceiling for a while, until she realizes that this can be a safe outlet. She won’t have to go through the faintly degrading process of being with another man and wishing he were Roy. She won’t have to undergo the risk of actually seducing him and disrupting the relationship they do have. 

Riza turns onto her side, and falls into a peaceful sleep.

-

The well-established rumor around East City Command is that Colonel Roy Mustang is a serial womanizer. 

Riza knows the truth behind all of his dates. She knows that it is petty, so she buries it very deep down, but she still feels a flicker of jealousy at seeing Roy head out for dinner with Vanessa, or Ava, or Claire, or Julie, or Sabrina, or any of the others. 

_Don’t be an idiot,_ she tells herself viciously, as she practices at the range after work, after Roy had left the office for a date with Julie. _Roy wouldn’t sleep with one of his informants. They work for him. He’s too scrupulous for that._

 _You know how he tends to mix the personal and professional,_ a dark voice whispers back, and Riza grits her teeth. 

-

Riza is stretched out on the sofa with a detective novel at twenty-one hundred hours on Friday night when her phone rings.

Riza answers it at once, expecting that it could be one of three options. It might be Rebecca calling to vent about tonight’s lackluster date, in which case she will make a bowl of popcorn and provide a sympathetic ear. It could be Havoc and Breda drunk-calling her from a bar or pay phone, to have her weigh in on whatever obscure topic they’re currently debating about. In which case she will lecture them about the dangers of alcohol poisoning, but also provide her opinion on the issue at hand. 

Finally, there’s a real possibility it could be Edward, sounding abashed, telling her that he and Alphonse got into some misadventure or another in a small town in the East. In which case Riza will get dressed immediately, requisition a military vehicle, and go find the brothers to provide assistance. 

(If Hughes were in town, chances are good it would be Roy calling her from a bar or pay phone, explaining that they’ve had far too much to drink, and could she please come and drive them home? The answer is always _yes._ But it isn’t Hughes Roy is out with tonight.)

It’s Roy on the phone anyway. “Hawkeye,” he greets. “How are you tonight? Am I interrupting anything?”

“Colonel?” Riza frowns. “Is everything alright?”

“Everything’s fine. Relax.” Riza hears the shuffling of paper on the other end of the line. “I called to see if you’d be willing to help me with my notes from my date with Julie.”

Riza sinks down into one of the chairs at the kitchen table. “You’re doing that now?”

Roy sniffs. “You don’t have to sound so surprised at the idea of me doing work, you know.”

“Sir, I have a hard enough time getting you to be productive during office hours.” Riza realizes that she’s smiling to herself, alone in her apartment. There’s no one around to see, but she makes an effort to smooth her expression nevertheless. “You can’t blame me for being surprised that you’re willing to work late on a Friday night.”

“I wouldn’t be so willing if I didn’t have my assistant to help me.” 

She can hear the smirk in Roy’s tone. She’d think that he was flirting, if she didn’t know any better, and Riza feels herself blush. “Fine. Hold on while I get my notebook.”

They stay on the phone for the next hour and a half. Roy relays what Julie had told him, in code. Riza writes it all down, and together, they figure out how to handle the information. What parts of it should be acted on, and how to act on it, and what parts of the information can be held for later in the year.

They get sidetracked, afterwards, into discussing their weekend plans and what they had for dinner. Roy complains that the marinara sauce at the restaurant was only passable, and offhandedly mentions that it wasn’t as good as he remembers hers being. Riza smiles and winds the telephone cord around her finger. She tells him that her secret was lemon zest, and that she has received a letter from the editors of _Guns & Ammo, _inviting her to write as one of their top contributors. 

She yawns, pressing a hand over her mouth. “Sorry, Colonel,” Riza apologizes. “You’re not boring me.”

“It’s fine. I shouldn’t keep you up all night, anyway.” Roy sighs. “Good night, Hawkeye.” 

“Good night, sir.”

Riza hangs up the phone. She takes a look at the clock on the far wall, and blinks, startled, looking at it again. She returns to her spot on the sofa, and wraps a blanket around her shoulders. She picks up her book, feeling oddly gratified.

(She isn’t Roy’s girlfriend. She has no real claim on him. It’s still quietly, fiercely satisfying to know that he might go out with other women, but _she’s_ the one he’s spending the night with. Even if it’s just over the phone.) 

-

They repeat this every time Roy goes on one of his dates.

-

Between these nighttime phone calls, and the other reasons Riza thinks about her commanding officer before bed, she finds herself experiencing a problem that is wholly new to her.

She’s used to waking up in the dead of night, a scream lodged in her throat, her heart racing, sweat making her pajama top and shorts stick to her skin. She’s used to waking up in the morning feeling like she hadn’t slept more than a couple of hours due to the mental exhaustion of back-to-back nightmares.

Riza isn’t used to waking up in the middle of the night, or in the morning, sleepily reaching toward the other side of her bed, and finding it empty. She comes awake reluctantly most mornings, now, struggling to leave the quiet, peaceful dreams and half-asleep fantasies where she’s held in Roy’s arms. 

She wakes up alone every morning, and wishes she didn’t have to. 

-

It is raining hard on the morning of October 15, 1913. Riza walks to work with Rebecca, Riza under her black military-issue umbrella, Rebecca sheltered by an enormous pink umbrella that draws envious stares from all the passing schoolgirls. 

Riza expects a normal day at work. Then she opens the door to the office to find Fuery, Breda, Falman, and Havoc all gathered around a box on the floor, muttering to themselves. Fuery looks back and forth between the members of the unit, a pleading expression on his face. Breda regards the contents of the box with deep distrust, Falman peers in with mild curiosity, and Havoc looks downright intrigued.

“What’s this?” Riza asks, as she folds up her umbrella and leans it against the wall. 

“The new branch of the East City animal shelter, apparently.” Havoc smirks. “Didn’t you get the memo?”

“I found him outside the building this morning, Lieutenant,” Fuery explains. “And I couldn’t just leave him there, not in the rain.”

Riza’s question dies in her throat when she approaches the box and peers inside. A tiny black-and-white puppy sits within, looking up at them with huge, trusting brown eyes. The dog makes eye contact with her and utters the softest little _yip,_ and Riza fights the urge to reach into the box, pick him up, and hold him close. 

“I want to find a home for him.” Fuery regards the puppy softly. “I’d rather not take him to the shelter, if it can be avoided.”

“Don’t look at me, kid,” Breda protests, backing away. “You know how I feel about dogs.”

Havoc snorts. “It’s a puppy, Bradykins. Look how little it is. It’s not going to hurt anyone.”

“It’ll grow,” Breda says darkly, taking another step back. 

Riza looks at Fuery. “Are you sure that you don’t want him?” Fuery’s family dog, Sandy, passed away a few months ago, and he’d been devastated. 

“I’d take him in a second if I could, but my apartment doesn’t allow pets,” Fuery says unhappily. 

“Mine does not allow pets either.” Falman crouches to get a closer look at the puppy, who looks at him and wags his little tail hard. “This is a shame. He appears friendly.”

Havoc picks the puppy up by the scruff of his neck. “I’ll take him,” he announces. “I bet he’d be good stir-fried. It’s a delicacy in some parts of the East--”

Riza confiscates the puppy from him at once. The puppy wriggles in her arms, and Havoc groans in protest. “It was a joke!”

“A terrible joke. We can find a better home for him, can’t we, Fuery?” Riza asks, returning the dog to the young Master Sergeant. She misses the warmth of his tiny, furry body, his little paws braced against her arm for support, as soon as he’s out of her arms. She thinks, _what if--_

Fuery nods fiercely. “The Elrics are down in the mess hall. I’ll go ask them.”

He rushes off, and Riza settles herself at her desk and begins to sort through her inbox, fighting back her disappointment. It is better this way. The Elrics deserve a dog, a companion on their extensive travels, much more than she does. Edward breaks his automail arm every so often, unfortunately, and the dog would be useful as an assistance animal. He’s a Shiba Inu; Riza could tell that at a glance. She’s familiar with the breed. It’s a fine type of dog. Clever, alert, agile, and highly trainable, often used as a watchdog or a hunting companion. The Military Police uses them on their force, along with Malinois dogs. 

Riza separates her paperwork into three stacks, mulling it over. She could help Edward train the puppy, and she could help Edward and Alphonse get settled with him too. There’s a pet store directly across from the park near her apartment. She could go with them over the lunch hour to purchase all the necessities. A collar and lead, bowls for food and water, a dog bed, and high-quality food, of course. They’ll be careful to select something with plenty of protein, since this is just a puppy, small enough that he must be barely weaned. 

Fuery returns after a while, visibly dejected. He makes his way to his desk, still cradling the puppy, who looks around the office with sad eyes. 

“No luck?” Falman asks. 

Fuery shakes his head. “Edward said they travel too much, and he’s not certain if they’ll be able to take a dog on trains and in hotels with them.”

“What’s going on here?” Roy saunters in, holding a cup of coffee. He shrugs off his damp coat, throwing it on the coat rack to dry, and then shakes the rain from his hair. The gesture is so surprisingly dog-like that Riza almost laughs. “And why does it smell like wet dog? Trying a new cologne again, Havoc?” 

Havoc glowers, and Fuery turns to their commanding officer, revealing the dog in his arms. “I’m sorry, Colonel, I just had to bring him in from the rain. I’m trying to find a home for him so that I don’t have to take him to the shelter.”

Roy takes a step closer, and Riza presses her fingertips to her temples. She’s familiar with his feelings about dogs; he’s expounded on them before. He’s fond of dogs for very different reasons than she is. 

Roy grins, scooping the poor puppy up from Fuery’s arms and holding it aloft in the air. “I love dogs!”

Fuery nearly jumps for joy. “You do? I didn’t know that!”

“Of course.” Roy strokes the puppy’s head. “They embody loyalty, they follow their master’s commands above all else, and--” he smirks around at them. “They never demand a paycheck.”

Regardless of how Riza feels about him, she isn’t blind to his nature. Roy hasn’t been able to do so much as keep a single houseplant alive for as long as she’s been under his command. The rest of the unit seems to be on the same page. They exchange alarmed looks. “You know that you have to walk them twice a day, every day, right?” Havoc asks. “Morning and night?” 

Roy turns, still holding the puppy, and gives her a look that’s at once challenging and mischievous. “My assistant could do that for me.”

Riza sighs. She rises and walks over to her Colonel, observing the puppy he currently holds against his shoulder. The dog looks over at her, his little nose twitching, and he wags his tail again, thumping against Roy’s uniform coat. The puppy strains toward her, and Riza longs to reach out and take him in her arms again. 

( _You don’t deserve this,_ a voice in her head says. Somewhere deep inside her, the little girl she had been, the little girl who listened to her mother’s dog stories while clutching her own stuffed dog, pleads, _please, please, can I have this?_

And Riza runs the numbers. This breed of dog lives twelve to fifteen years, on average. Roy should become Fuhrer in ten to fifteen years. So she won’t have to worry about leaving the dog behind, when the inevitable happens. The trials; the imprisonment; the firing squad. _Not like you’d have to leave a child behind,_ the voice whispers again.

It will be a comfort. A solace, after everything she has been through. It’s something she has always wanted.)

“Please give him to me, sir.” 

Roy hands over the dog, and Riza cradles him carefully. He drapes his little paws over her hand, and then nestles against her shoulder, bracing his paws against her collarbone. “Well, I guess if no one else wants to be his owner, then I have no choice. I’ll take him.” Riza scratches the soft fur on the puppy’s head. “I hope you know that I’m very strict,” she tells him, and it’s an effort not to beam from ear to ear. 

“You can say that again,” Havoc says, in an undertone, but then he grins. “I bet you’re going to end up spoiling him in between the training sessions.” 

“Lieutenant!” Fuery looks close to weeping tears of joy. “I’m so glad!”

Roy smiles at her so tenderly that Riza almost feels embarrassed at the fact that the rest of the unit is in the room with them. “You have a good heart,” he says. “It’s the best possible fit.” 

“What are you going to name it?” Falman asks. 

Riza glances outside of the window, at the dark skies and the still-pouring rain, and the storm-tossed leaves skittering down the sidewalks in the wind. Joy and excitement course through her, quiet but unbridled. She can’t even remember the last time she felt like this; like the happy child she had been so long ago. 

It’s a special moment, brought to her by a puppy who deserves a special name. Riza looks into the dog’s eyes, mulling it over. “Black Hayate,” she says decisively. Black Hayate gives another _yip_ and strains forward, pressing his cold, wet nose against her cheek in a little kiss, and Riza almost giggles. 

“You have terrible naming sense,” Roy mutters. 

Riza raises an eyebrow at him, turns away, and returns to her desk, still carrying her puppy. “Don’t listen to the Colonel, Black Hayate. He’s just upset because he’s useless in the rain.” 

-

It’s the most exciting thing that has happened to her in a long while - since the trip to Xing, easily. Riza calls Rebecca during the five minutes that comprise her morning break to share the news. Rebecca lets it slip to Grumman, who sends her a triple-sealed memo congratulating her and welcoming his “grand-puppy” to the family. (Riza rolls her eyes at the joke, but tucks the memo into her pocket anyway. She will take it home and preserve it in the pages of her mother’s journals, just as she does with the birthday cards Grumman gives her.) 

She and Fuery visit the pet store on their lunch break to buy a vast array of supplies and enrichment toys for Black Hayate, and Alphonse tags along with them. Riza goes to the East City Command library during a few spare minutes in the afternoon and checks out the Military Police manual on dog training. 

“Are you going to request parental leave?” Roy teases, later that afternoon. Black Hayate is nestled in his new dog bed in a corner of the office, gnawing on a teething stick. 

Riza takes the stack of reports he hands to her and looks over them, checking briefly for completion. “With your permission, sir, I’d like to bring him to the office until he’s fully trained. I promise that he won’t be a bother or interfere with our work. I have the intention of training him as a military dog for our unit, as well as my companion animal.”

Roy leans back in his chair, eyeing Black Hayate. “Two dogs of the military in one office? It seems excessive.” He smirks at his own wit. “Of course you can bring him to work. I think he has potential. He could rise to Second Lieutenant within a couple of years.”

Riza smiles. “Thank you, Colonel.”

Roy lifts his coffee in a toast to her. “Anything for you, Lieutenant.” 

-

It might sound trite, but Black Hayate changes her life. With the exception of meeting Rebecca, moving to East City to work with her unit, and learning the truth about Grumman, everything that has changed Riza’s life in the past has been some degree of painful and traumatic. Mother’s death, the Flame Alchemy tattoo, making the choice to enlist in the military, and Ishval. 

This sort of positive change is a breath of fresh air, and Riza can’t stop marveling at her luck. Every day that she wakes up early to walk Black Hayate, under the still, beautiful sunrise, she marvels at it. _Is this really my life?_ she wonders. She has a purpose to work towards every day, friends, family; and confidence, boldness, and poise she would never have dreamed of having as a girl. She hasn’t been timid, hasn’t longed for approval, hasn’t done anything she regretted the next morning, in a long time. 

Riza loves training Black Hayate, both to do basic canine activities like _sit_ and _stay_ and _fetch,_ and, in time, how to do more complex tasks. He grows into an excellent judge of character. He learns how to trip up perpetrators attempting to flee the scene of their crimes, something that Roy always laughs at. He learns how to retrieve dropped items and quickly, gently offer them back to whoever dropped them. 

(Havoc abuses this knowledge by consistently dropping his pens and folders, just for the novelty of having Hayate return them to him. _He’s like a personal assistant!_ Havoc says, astonished, before directing a sly smirk at her. _The cutest personal assistant I’ve ever seen, besides his owner._

 _Hawkeye isn’t my personal assistant, she’s my Lieutenant,_ Roy practically growls. _And she’s higher-ranking than you are, so watch it._ ) 

Riza admires how clever and teachable Black Hayate is, with the right encouragement and support. He becomes her constant companion. She takes him with her when she goes out, whenever possible, to help him become exposed to many different environments and people, and learn how to respond appropriately to each of them. 

Riza loves looking down and seeing Black Hayate smiling up at her, wagging his tail, eyes eager and responsive. She can never resist smiling back. 

He changes things for her at home, as well. Her small apartment doesn’t feel so empty any longer, not with Black Hayate trotting around, or lying near the kitchen, watching her cook, or curling up beside her every time she sits down on the sofa to read. Riza won’t admit this to anybody besides Rebecca, Grumman, and Fuery, who understand what it’s like to have a pet, but she chats with him a bit. He wags his tail in response, or gives her a small bark. 

Riza pets Black Hayate and cuddles him, and sometimes presses kisses to the top of his head, and he nestles close to her. The contact, the unconditional love Hayate gives her, assuages the loneliness and the hunger for touch she’s carried with her for so long. 

He sleeps at the foot of her bed, watching over her. When Riza wakes up in the middle of the night, crying out from a nightmare, Black Hayate jumps onto the bed and presses close to her. She lies down again, one hand on his flank, and focuses on his steady heartbeat, the softness of his fur, until she drifts back into sleep. 

“I love you,” Riza tells Hayate, every now and then, and he looks up at her and smiles. The words are unfamiliar in her mouth, and she stammers around them the first few times, but they are so sweet. She hasn’t said those three words to anyone out loud since Mother died. She loves her unit (Edward and Alphonse included, of course) and Rebecca and Grumman, but those are all loves left unspoken. Adults don’t tell other adults that they love them unless they are parents or a romantic partner, and Riza has neither. 

It makes her feel good, and warm inside, to say it. 

-

Winter warms into a rainy spring of 1914, and their unit learns of a case involving a man who has been murdering State Alchemists throughout Amestris. Giolio Comanche is the first to fall, soon followed by Isaac McDougal and Basque Grand. All of whom had been involved in the Ishvalan massacre. 

Riza starts to suffer from sleepless nights and nightmares again, of the scarred man coming for Roy. He had killed more Ishvalan civilians than McDougal, Comanche, and Grand combined. Roy is definitely a target - certainly more so than Major Armstrong, who had been dismissed from the front lines for refusing to follow orders. (Only his family’s status had prevented him from being shot for insubordination or court-martialed). And certainly more so than Edward, who had been an innocent child at the time of the Ishvalan Civil War.

They have been lucky enough, over the past years, that Riza has served primarily as Roy’s assistant and trusted First Lieutenant. She had been a bodyguard in name only. She steps up her practice hours at the range, because she knows, with a deep, dreadful certainty, that is about to change. It’s only a matter of time. 

-

One day, Riza asks where the Elric brothers are, and Roy tells her that he has introduced them to Shou Tucker. “The Sewing-Life Alchemist,” he says absentmindedly, as they walk through the hallways of East City Command, returning from yet another meeting regarding the man they know only as Scar. 

Something about the name strikes Riza as eerie, and she frowns. “That’s an odd title. I’ve never heard of him.”

“He’s a bio-alchemist. His research notes might hold some information on how Fullmetal and his brother can restore their bodies.” Roy folds his arms behind his back. “I’m surprised you haven’t heard of Tucker. He was mentioned in the papers a couple of years ago, when he created a chimera capable of human speech. That earned him his State Alchemist certification.” 

“A chimera?” Riza thinks of the creature of Xerxian mythology. “He used alchemy to meld animals together? But why?”

Roy glances at her out of the corner of his eye. “Why not?” 

Riza shakes her head. That one tiny exchange had been why Father favored Roy. Since enlisting in the military and serving at East City Command, she has grown to appreciate her own cleverness for what it is - but she doesn’t think like alchemists do, and she never will. “I’ll never understand you alchemists.”

“It’s no different from physicians, scientists, or mathematicians who seek greater scientific and mathematical understanding using physics, calculus, chemistry, biology, et cetera.” Roy gestures vaguely. “It’s the pursuit of higher knowledge. The desire to explore the unknown. To push the boundaries of what’s generally accepted as fact - within certain limits, of course,” he adds, and Riza knows that both of them are thinking of Edward. 

One question lingers, about Shou Tucker and his chimera. “But how did he teach it to speak?” Riza presses. “He would have had to alter the throat and the brain of the - goat, or lion, or whatever the creatures he used were, to make the creature capable of language. I don’t think that even medical alchemists are capable of such a thing.” 

“They’re not. That’s the mystery.” Roy looks thoughtful. “No one knows, and Tucker won’t reveal his secret. It was probably a fluke, though. As far as I know, he hasn’t created another talking chimera.”

“Hmm.” Riza falls silent. Over the years, she’s overcome her distrust of alchemy, to some extent. She can accept medical alchemy, and alchemy used for the preservation of the natural world, and even alchemy used for construction or the purposes of industry. But the vast majority of those alchemists aren’t State Alchemists, with their bizarre, obscure abilities and research. “Well,” she says, finally. “If Tucker can help Edward and Alphonse, that would be far more valuable than anything else he’s done.”

“Right.” They arrive at their office, and Roy opens the door for her. “Fullmetal deserves a break. The false lead on the Philosopher’s Stone in Liore really got to him.” 

It’s rare that he speaks of Edward with such consideration, and Riza smiles at him.

-

One morning a week later, Riza receives a phone call at her desk. She picks it up on the first ring, as always. “Lieutenant Hawkeye speaking.” 

For a couple of moments, there’s nothing on the other end of the line except ragged breathing, and Riza’s shoulders stiffen. “Hello?” she asks. 

“Lieutenant.” Edward’s voice is hoarse. “You have to come. We need… There’s been…”

Riza stands up so quickly that the rest of the unit gives her startled looks. “Are you or Alphonse hurt? Where are you?”

“Tucker’s house.” Edward sobs once, brief and strangled. It’s so unlike him. She’s never seen him cry before, not even when he’s been injured, his automail arm completely mangled. Not even after all the false leads for the Philosopher’s Stone that he and Alphonse have encountered over the past years. 

Riza puts her hand over the speaker of the phone. “Colonel!” she calls, her voice sharp and urgent in a way that it rarely is. 

“I’ll get him.” Breda gets up at once and hurries over to Roy’s office. 

“Are you hurt?” Riza asks again. 

“Al and I aren’t, but…” Edward starts to cry. “Come quick,” he says, and then the line goes dead. 

Roy emerges from his office, coat on, keys in hand. He looks at her, as if stricken by her expression. “Let’s go,” he orders. “Havoc, you’re the officer in charge until we get back.”

They nearly run to Roy’s car, ducking their heads against the pouring rain, slamming their doors when they get inside. Roy throws the car into gear and speeds out of the East City Command parking lot so fast that the car’s tires slip on the rain-slick roads. 

“What do you think could have happened?” Out of habit, Riza takes out her service weapon and her backup gun in turn, checking that both are fully loaded. “Edward said that he and Alphonse weren’t hurt, but I’ve never heard him sound so upset.” 

Roy presses down harder on the accelerator, speeding through a red light. It’s something she would have chastised him for, in any other circumstance. “It was likely some sort of alchemical mishap caused by Tucker trying to restore Fullmetal’s arm or leg. Bio-alchemy can backfire, sometimes gruesomely.” 

“You don’t think Tucker is dead?” Riza’s chest tightens at the thought of the guilt Edward and Alphonse would feel at witnessing Tucker die or be maimed in an attempt to help them. No wonder Edward sounded so distressed on the phone. 

“He could very well be.” Roy scowls. “It was grossly irresponsible for the three of them to attempt something like that in Tucker’s home laboratory, without any other medical alchemists or a doctor on site. I’ll give them a piece of my mind once we call an ambulance for Tucker. Hopefully Fullmetal had the presence of mind to do that once he got off the phone with you.”

They fall into silence. It’s a tense drive to Shou Tucker’s home in the suburbs of East City, and Riza shifts in her seat, as restless as a caged animal. 

When Roy pulls up to the front of Tucker’s enormous home, there’s no ambulance in sight. “What the hell,” Roy says, under his breath. “Why didn’t they call for help? They’ve wasted precious time. Neither you or I can do more than basic field medicine and medical alchemy.”

They rush up the stairs, trying not to slip on the steep stone steps. Roy tries the door, which is mercifully unlocked, and they enter. It’s dark inside, and Riza’s eyes take a moment to adjust to the gloom. 

“Fullmetal!” Roy barks. “It’s Mustang and Hawkeye! Where are you?” 

Alphonse is the one who replies. His voice echoes from somewhere further in the house. “We’re back here,” he calls out shakily. 

Riza flicks at a light switch on the wall, but nothing happens. She bites back the entirely uncharacteristic urge to curse. “Power’s out. It must be the storm.”

She can practically hear Roy grinding his teeth. “Stay close. And my gloves got wet in the rain, so I can’t even light our path, damn it.”

Riza automatically pulls out a spare pair for him from the pockets of her long, dark coat. It’s military-issue, identical to his. He had ordered it for her some time ago, but she only wears it while traveling or on rainy days. “Here.”

“Thanks.” Roy pulls on the new gloves and then snaps his fingers, making a ball of flame hover ahead of them, lighting their path. 

They make their way to a back hallway of the house. From the limited light given off from Roy’s fire, Riza sees Edward and Alphonse sitting in the hallway. Their postures are identical - curled up tight like injured animals, knees hugged to their chests. A gas lamp sits beside them, throwing off faint orange light. 

“Edward! Alphonse!”

They look up at her voice, and slowly pull themselves to their feet. Edward’s cheeks are stained with tears, and the knuckles on his flesh-and-blood hand, Riza realizes, are raw and bloody. Alphonse keeps one metal hand against the wall, as if to steady himself. 

“What’s the meaning of this, you two?” Roy demands. “Where’s Tucker? What happened? Do you have any idea how worried Hawkeye was?”

“Shut up, Colonel.” Riza rushes to them, and restrains herself from pulling Edward into her arms. She puts her hands on his shoulders instead, inspecting him for other signs of injury. “Is everything all right?” 

“No.” Edward looks up at her. His eyes are red and swollen. “Tucker is - he is…”

“He’s a monster,” Alphonse says quietly. 

“He did something terrible. To his little daughter.” Edward wipes his nose with the sleeve of his coat, shivering. 

Riza freezes. “What?” 

Beside her, Roy looks similarly outraged, his thoughts clearly having gone the same direction as hers. His hands curl into fists. “What do you mean?” 

Edward shakes his head, as if unable to say anything further, and Alphonse speaks up. “He...transmuted Nina. With her pet dog, Alexander, to create a talking chimera. Just like he did two years ago with his wife. And not even Brother can undo what he did to Nina.” 

Bile rises in Riza’s throat. “No,” she says. “That can’t be possible.” 

She looks at Roy for confirmation. The color is draining from his face; he appears like he might be ill. “It is,” he replies tersely. “Such a thing would be forbidden, an abomination, but it is possible. Where are they?” he snaps. 

“Tucker is in that room.” Alphonse nods toward the closed door behind them, sounding miserable. “And so is Nina. She… She didn’t want to leave him. She was upset because Brother hurt him.”

Riza presses her hand to her mouth, trying to suppress her nausea. 

“Stay out here with Fullmetal and Alphonse,” Roy orders. His hand is at her elbow, holding her steady. “That’s an order. I’m going in.” 

Riza shakes her head. “I can’t.” She stammers. “If he tries to do anything to you - I have to protect you.”

Roy swears under his breath. He grabs the gas lamp from the floor and pushes the door open. Edward and Alphonse turn away. It’s the last thing Riza wants to do, but she follows Roy into the dark room, her footfalls slow and leaden.

Shou Tucker huddles against the wall on the far side of the room. A large white dog sits beside him, pressing its nose against his cheek, as if trying to comfort him. Riza’s stomach heaves when she sees the dog’s...hair. Its long, unbound dark hair, _human_ hair, cascading over its coat of white fur.

Tucker looks up at them. Blood trickles from his nose, the corner of his mouth, and his right temple. The dog looks up at them, too, and the dog’s eyes… aren’t quite a dog’s eyes. 

“Ed...ward?” the dog croaks, and Riza nearly screams.

A tremor races through Roy’s shoulders. “Tucker,” he says, his voice low and furious. “Tell me that the Elrics misunderstood. Tell me that’s not your daughter.”

“I can’t do that.” Shou Tucker looks back at Roy with a strange calm. “I thought they would understand, considering their situation. But _you_ should understand - your alchemy, too, has pushed the boundaries of what’s considered reasonable and humane--” 

“Don’t you _dare_ compare us!” Roy snarls, lifting his hand, his fingers twitching like he’s about to strike. Riza has never heard him sound so enraged. She flinches back from him, and the dog - the girl - Nina whimpers piteously. 

She has to intercede, even though her throat is tight and aching. “Colonel, don’t,” Riza says hoarsely. “The girl…” 

Nina speaks. “Don’t...hurt...Father.” The words are laborious, but so earnest. So pleading. “Please.” 

Roy lowers his hand, and shudders with revulsion. “Get that thing out of the way,” he orders. 

_She’s not a thing,_ Riza wants to cry. She holds out a shaking hand, like she holds out her hand for Elicia to hold, like she holds out her hand for Hayate to shake. The juxtaposition is sickening. “Come here, please, Nina. It’s okay. The Colonel won’t hurt anybody.”

Nina trots to her, reluctantly, and sits at her feet, and looks up at her, silent and fearful. Riza strokes her dark hair gently, carding her fingers through the soft locks. She can’t stop shaking. “It’s okay,” she whispers, trying to comfort her. “It’s all right, sweetheart.” 

It’s not okay. It’s not all right. Alphonse said there was no undoing what had been done to this girl. Nina has to live, trapped in a dog’s body, sharing a dog’s mind, for the rest of her life. And her father did this to her. Her father.

How had it happened? Had Shou Tucker asked his daughter, _Nina, sweetheart, do you want to help your Daddy with his research? Do you want to come into my study?_

And of course Nina would have said yes. Because she was a little girl with no mother, just Father, and she would have wanted to please Father and make him happy, even though she was young, even though she didn’t fully understand the magnitude of what he was asking of her--

“I should put you down right here,” Roy whispers to Tucker. “But I won’t. You’ll spend the rest of your life rotting in a jail cell for what you’ve done. I’m using my authority as a Colonel to place you under house arrest, effective immediately. The Military Police will be in shortly to speak to you further. Don’t even think about trying to leave.” 

He takes one step back from Tucker, and then another. He looks at Riza and Nina. “Come on,” he rasps. “We need to inform the MP of what’s happened here.”

Riza stares at him, and then down at Nina. “We can’t leave her here,” she says. “Not with him.” 

“We can’t take her now.” A muscle twitches in Roy’s jaw. “We don’t know where to surrender her yet. She can’t be placed under the children’s protective services, not with her being - the way she is.”

Nina starts to cry. It comes out as a dog’s pained whimpers, as she crouches low to the floor. “Won’t...go. Won’t...leave...Father.”

Riza almost weeps. She looks at Roy helplessly, and he averts his gaze from her, unable to face Nina. Nina is - too big. She’s not as easily carried as Hayate. The dog, Alexander, had been a Great Pyrenees, probably weighing close to a hundred pounds. She’s strong, but not strong enough to lift Nina and carry her to the car. 

“Fine.” Her voice is stiff and flat. Something inside her recedes, shutters away, trying to protect her mind from the horror. She hasn’t seen anything so monstrous since Ishval. She hadn’t been prepared for this. For this level of atrocity, not in a war zone, not on the front lines, but in a suburban manor in East City. For this kind of cruelty, not perpetrated by the military, but by a father on his own daughter. 

They leave the room. Riza barely hears Roy placing a call to the MP, and then to Havoc, and instructing the Elric brothers to stay here until they arrive, and then lecturing Edward about something or another. She feels numb. 

It’s still pouring rain when they leave the Tucker home. Edward and Alphonse wait on the steps for the Military Police to arrive, and the two of them drive back to East City Command. Roy mutters about the trial that Shou Tucker will face; about what crimes he should be tried for and what sentences each of those charges carry. “Keaton Lawrence has a history of defending alchemists charged with serious ethical violations.” He taps his thumb against the steering wheel angrily. “I’ll call Chris today. We’ll engineer something to ensure that Lawrence won’t be able to take this case without ruining his reputation.”

Riza nods once, mechanically. 

They get back to the office. The mood is sober; Havoc must have passed on the information to everyone else. Falman presses a thick folder into Roy’s hands. “Here is the material you requested, Colonel.”

“I’ll start the paperwork.” Riza heads to her desk. 

The unit works in heavy silence. The only sound is the rain drumming on the roof and against the windows, and the occasional crack of thunder in the background. Riza thinks of Edward and Alphonse waiting outside the Tucker home, and of Nina inside.

She must be so frightened. Children don’t like thunder. (Neither do dogs.) She must be afraid of the storm, and confused about what has happened to her, and scared about being taken away from her father. 

Riza’s eyes burn, and she closes her eyes tightly against the tears.

The hours pass, and she startles when she feels a hand on her shoulder. She looks up at Breda, who regards her with quiet understanding. “We’re going down for lunch. Do you want to come?”

Riza has no appetite, after what she had seen this morning. ( _God,_ she thinks suddenly, _what will Nina have for lunch? She must be hungry--_ and then she corrects her thought, with brutal, merciless efficiency. There is no God.) “No, thank you.” 

Breda looks like he’s considering insisting that she take a break, and then he sighs. “We’ll bring something up for you and the Colonel.”

Breda, Havoc, Falman, and Fuery leave. Riza gathers her paperwork, and then takes it into Roy’s office, shutting the door behind her. He’s standing by the window, staring out over the rain-washed city.

“I just got a call from the MP,” he says, looking over his shoulder at her. “They’re on site now. Colonel Blaine mentioned the possibility of house arrest, since Tucker is likely not a threat to the larger community. I strongly suggested he reconsider.”

House arrest. Prison. A trial. All the while, Nina will languish - where? There’s a bitter taste in Riza’s mouth. “Yes, sir.”

Roy turns to face her, and he looks her over carefully. “Hawkeye. Are you all right?”

It’s such a ludicrous question that she wants to laugh. She isn’t all right. She wants to put a bullet through Shou Tucker’s head. But that would be too quick for him. Why should he have the luxury of a quick death, when he had so callously condemned Nina to years of suffering? No, Riza wants to shoot him right in the gut, first, and then blow out one of his kneecaps, and then put a bullet in his pelvis, for good measure. That should be a slow, painful death. 

She’s killed so many, many, many people. None of whom had deserved it. And she hadn’t killed the one person who does. 

“How could he?” Riza asks. The words are choked, barely audible. Her fingernails bite into her palms. She had seen a framed photograph, in the kitchen near the telephone, of Nina as she had been. With her sweet smile and dark braids, her arms thrown around the neck of her dog, both of them beaming. Such a perfect, innocent little girl. “How could he do that to his daughter? And his wife?”

Roy sighs, and looks down at the floor. “I don’t know.” 

The pressure builds inside her. Riza wants to scream, and never stop. She hasn’t thought of Father in so long, but now she thinks of him and she thinks of Shou Tucker in the same breath and she wants to claw out both of their eyes and leave them bleeding. Alchemists and their disgusting obsessions, and how their stupid fucking research and theories blind them to what is real in the world, what truly matters--

“I know.” Riza stares out of the window. “He cared about his alchemy, about his precious research, more than he cared about her.”

Roy looks up sharply, the weight of the realization hitting him. “Hawkeye...” 

She doesn’t want to hear whatever he has to say. Whatever comfort he has to offer isn’t enough. 

“I hate--” Riza starts, and she’s unprepared for the venom, the rage, that courses through her. _Alchemists,_ she wants to finish. _I hate the ugly perversion of science that all of you practice._

Shou Tucker effectively killed his daughter. Edward mangled his own body and lost Alphonse’s. Berthold Hawkeye spent years upon years creating a form of alchemy that was effectively a weapon of mass destruction. 

And Roy? Roy used it. 

Sometimes Riza forgets that the man she loves has blood on his hands, the blood of innocents, the blood of children. Lives destroyed, just as surely as Tucker had destroyed Nina’s. She stares at him now, mute. 

Roy leaves the window, and comes to stand in front of her. He reaches for her, as if to put a hand on her shoulder, and then pulls back, his expression anguished. 

As hard as she tries to hold them back, the tears spill over. And then Roy is wrapping his arms around her, holding her close as she weeps. “Riza,” he whispers, and he sounds close to tears himself. “Riza, I’m so sorry.” 

“We have to do something.” Riza can barely get the words out through her tears. She hasn’t broken down like this in years, not since her back had been burned. “This can never happen again. This happened in our own backyard, Roy. We have no way of knowing what’s going on elsewhere in the country.” 

“We can’t make alchemy illegal.” Roy’s voice is gentle, as are his hands, as he rubs her back. “It’s too entrenched in our society. It’ll just drive the practice underground.” 

Another sob tears its way free of her. “Then what?” 

“I don’t know yet. But I promise you, I _promise_ you, that we will work to put protections in place for those who are vulnerable, like Nina and her mother. Like…” Roy stops. He holds her closer, one hand cradling the back of her head. 

Riza closes her eyes, and fresh tears burn down her cheeks. She got out, she got free, with nothing worse than years of neglect and an excruciatingly painful tattoo on her back. But she had been able to forge a new life for herself, and heal. Nina will never get that chance to grow up, to heal, to find a new life and a new family to love her. Riza whimpers, agonized at the thought, and buries her face against Roy’s shoulder. 

“We have to find a good home for her,” she manages. “She can’t spend the rest of her days in a pen in some alchemy lab at a university. I’m sure that they’ll want to take her and study her. We can’t allow it. She deserves better than that.” 

“Yes, of course,” Roy says, at once. He hugs her tighter, trying to reassure her. “We’ll figure something out.”

Riza looks up at him, her vision blurry with tears. Belatedly, she realizes that she’s sobbing in her commanding officer’s arms and this is extremely unprofessional, and she can’t help but remember the other times she’s wept in front of him. When Father died. When he had burned her back. Roy always sees her at her lowest points. 

When she had cried before, he’d offered her his handkerchief. This time, Roy carefully wipes her tears away with his thumbs. The gesture is so infinitely tender that it almost triggers a new wave of tears. Riza takes a deep breath, trying to steady herself, trying to regain her composure. She feels ashamed at her breakdown, and exhausted, and sad, so deeply, deeply sad.

“Thank you, Colonel,” Riza whispers, wiping at her face with the back of her sleeve. “I’m sorry for this display.”

“You have nothing to apologize for.” To her surprise, Roy embraces her again, and she can’t help but lean into him. He whispers something against her hair, something she can’t quite hear, in a language she doesn’t understand. 

“What was that?” Riza asks.

Roy pulls back, straightens his coat, and steps away from her, his face slightly red. “A Xingese blessing I learned. It’s - asking that your next day be better than this one.”

“Thank you.” Riza dabs at her eyes, self-conscious. “You too.”

“I’m giving you the rest of the day off.” Roy clears his throat. “I’m going to call Grumman and ask that he let Catalina off for the afternoon so that she can walk you home. Or I’ll drive you.”

“No,” Riza interrupts. “I mean - no, sir. There’s too much that I need to help with.”

Roy heads for his phone. “The rest of the unit can take care of it.” 

“Colonel, I’m not going to leave you,” Riza insists. “Not with Scar on the loose. I can’t--” 

She falls silent, embarrassed. _I can’t lose you,_ she’d almost said. 

Roy gives her a long look. “Fine,” he allows, at last. “But sit down, at least, and rest a while. Breda’s bringing food up for us.”

“Yes, sir.” Riza makes her way to the sofa, and sinks down on it. It’s hard to breathe, and her eyes and head throb from the intensity of her tears. She puts her head in her hands, and closes her eyes.

-

The situation worsens by the day, as spring turns into summer. 

Scar slaughters Shou Tucker and Nina. 

(And something deep inside Riza breaks when she looks at Nina’s lifeless body.)

But there’s no time to mourn, even though part of her (the little girl, and the woman, not the soldier) wails. Riza grits her teeth and thinks only of seeing Scar locked in prison. 

He’s an Ishvalan survivor, and under normal circumstances, she would sympathize with him - but he targets Roy, he targets Edward, who had nothing to do with the Ishvalan massacre, and he murdered innocent Nina, already victimized, for no reason whatsoever. 

So Riza dedicates herself to finding Scar, after he escapes into the sewers of East City, working alongside her unit and the Military Police. As hard as they try, they come up with only the faintest of leads. All of this while preparing for Roy’s rumored transfer to Central. And meanwhile, their unit hears that Edward has been hospitalized in Central, following some incident at an empty laboratory. 

“Are you doing okay?” Rebecca asks her, a little tentatively, when she comes over to visit one evening. They sit on the sofa in the living room, Black Hayate in Riza’s lap. “You don’t look so well.”

Riza shrugs one shoulder. “I’m tired.” She hasn’t been sleeping well, since Nina. Her nightmares have returned in full force, nightmares of Father and Shou Tucker and Scar all bleeding together. And sometimes, when she looks at her sweet, beloved Black Hayate, she remembers Nina. “We’ve never worked this hard on an operation, but our search for Scar is going nowhere.”

“I know you’re worried about Mustang and Edward, with Scar still being out there.” Rebecca reaches out and takes her hand. “But you’re not doing yourself any favors by burning the candle at both ends like this.”

“I know.” Riza squeezes Rebecca’s hand. “I just…” She falters, and looks out the darkened window. There’s a pit in her stomach, a strange sense of dread.

“What is it?”

Riza shakes her head, and wraps her arms around herself. “I don’t know what it is,” she admits. “But I feel like something’s coming. Like everything is about to change. Like we’re on the verge of something terrible.” 

Rebecca regards her with concern. “I hope not. I want you to get some rest after I leave, okay? Take a sleeping pill if you have to.” 

Riza agrees. She takes a sleeping pill, just one, after Rebecca goes. She lies in bed, and listens to the rain fall, and to Black Hayate’s soft breathing, until she succumbs to sleep. 

-

The phone rings, shattering the silence of the night, and Riza sits bolt upright. Hayate leaps off the bed and dashes over to the living room, following the sound. 

Riza follows at once, throwing her blankets aside and pausing for a moment to grab the gun she keeps on her bedside table, her lethargy forgotten. Only the unit, Rebecca, and Grumman have her home phone number. They would never call her at this hour unless there’s been some sort of emergency. Brief, nightmare scenarios flash before her eyes, of Roy’s body or Edward’s, mangled by Scar. 

“This is Hawkeye,” Riza says, struggling to maintain her composure, as she grabs the phone off the receiver. 

“Hawkeye.” It takes her a moment to recognize Roy’s voice. It’s thin and strained, and she’s never heard him sound like this before. 

“Colonel?” Riza turns on the kitchen light, letting the illumination shock the heaviness from her eyelids. “What is it?”

Roy takes a ragged breath. It’s almost a gasp. Like he’s drowning. “I got a call from Gracia just now. It’s Hughes.”

“What?” Riza’s grip tightens on her gun, and she knows, even as she says it, because there’s only one reason Gracia would call Roy at two in the morning, and only one reason Roy would then call her. Hughes must be hurt, and hurt badly--

“He’s been…” Roy trails off, and he’s silent for a while, as if he can’t bring himself to finish the sentence. “He’s been killed.” 

Riza drops her gun.

-

Riza calls Grumman at home, which she’s never done before, and explains the situation. He immediately gives them leave to go to Central for the investigation and the funeral. (Riza can barely think the word.) She calls Havoc, apologizing for the lateness of the hour, and tells him what has happened, and that he is the officer in charge of the unit and the Scar investigation until they return. She asks that he please tell Rebecca that she’ll be gone for a few days, and ask her or Fuery to take care of Black Hayate until she returns.

“Yeah, of course,” Havoc replies, unusually serious. “And...tell the Colonel I’m sorry.”

“I will.” Riza bites her lip to keep from crying. She can’t imagine how she would feel if she were in Roy’s place. If she’d gotten a phone call in the middle of the night informing her that someone had killed Rebecca. Just the thought makes her sick. 

“And, Hawkeye - take care of yourself.”

Havoc hangs up, and Riza stares at the phone for a moment, before starting to get dressed.

-

She walks to Roy’s apartment, which is just a couple of blocks from hers, her canvas bag slung over her shoulder, one gun holstered at her thigh, and the other in the pocket of her coat. It’s close to three in the morning and the East City streets are deserted at this hour. Riza remains vigilant nevertheless. (They don’t know, yet, what happened to Hughes. If the murder had been a random act of senseless violence. If he had been targeted for his position in the military.) 

Riza knocks at Roy’s door. He opens it, after a few moments. 

He’s in uniform, as she is. Roy is pale as a ghost, his eyes red. He looks at her, blank, numb, as if he doesn’t recognize her. 

“Colonel,” Riza says, as gently as she can. She reaches out and puts a comforting hand on his arm, just like she would to Havoc, Breda, Falman, Fuery, Edward and Alphonse. 

Roy doesn’t say anything in response. He just steps forward, hugging her tight, burying his face in her hair. He smells faintly of liquor. 

“What can I do?” Riza asks, her voice almost breaking on the question, as she wraps her arms around him. It’s hard to speak, with how tightly, almost painfully, he’s clinging to her. All she knows is that she would do anything, anything he asked, anything he wanted, to make this better. To make him feel better. 

“Nothing,” Roy says, and she can feel his tears dripping onto her hair. 

It makes Riza feel helpless, useless, and she closes her eyes. 

-

The funeral is grueling, though Riza hadn’t been particularly close to Hughes. He had been Roy’s friend, not hers. She knew how Roy loved him, and vice versa, but some part of her had never been able to accept the apparent ease with which Hughes had moved on, after Ishval. 

But still. Maes Hughes had been twenty-nine, a devoted husband and father. He should have lived for decades longer. He should have grown old alongside his beloved wife, and seen his daughter grow into adulthood. Riza stands behind her Colonel at the funeral, and she grieves for Hughes, for Gracia, for Elicia. For Roy. Hughes had been the brother Roy never had, just as Rebecca is the sister she never had. She can’t imagine the magnitude of this loss. 

Roy lingers alone in front of Hughes’ grave after the funeral, his head bowed. After Riza gives her condolences to Gracia and Elicia, she goes to stand by his side. 

-

Their investigation at Central Command raises more questions than answers.

They stand outside of the phone booth where Hughes breathed his last. Major Armstrong departs, leaving them alone.

“I’m going after the senior staff,” Roy says, his voice heavy with dark purpose. He turns and looks at her, and the expression in his eyes - Riza doesn’t recognize him, for a moment. “Are you with me, Lieutenant?”

The setting sun glows blood-red.

Riza returns his gaze steadily. “Do you even have to ask?”

-

They return to East City that night, and Riza spends the next two weeks coordinating the details of their entire unit’s transfer to Central. It’s exhausting, painstaking work. She turns down Havoc, Breda, Falman, and Fuery’s offers to help; they have their hands full enough with the Scar investigation, which is quickly growing cold. 

Riza gets to work early and works through her lunches. After work, she goes home, collects Black Hayate from her apartment, and then walks him to East City Command, picking up dinner on the way. She and Black Hayate sit with Roy in his office, and they speculate and theorize about Hughes’ murder, trying to form connections with anything that Madame Christmas and the informants have reported, until well after nightfall.

It’s disconcerting, to see the change that has come over Roy. He doesn’t smile like he used to, and his voice has a hard edge to it more often than not. 

It’s to be expected, of course. It still hurts.

(It’s a difficult, confusing time; these evenings and nights where they talk in private in his office. Roy sits at his desk, fingers steepled together, frowning, deep in thought to cover the pain and the grief, and part of Riza longs to offer him the comfort a girlfriend would. She wants to massage the tension from his shoulders, and run her fingers through his hair and down his chest. Lean down and press a kiss to his cheek, his jaw, his lips, and offer a distraction, a moment or an hour of respite, from the unceasing tension that has fallen over them since learning about Hughes’ murder. 

But she isn’t Roy’s girlfriend. She is his Lieutenant. His most devoted subordinate. His right hand. His queen, if she uses his chess analogy. And those things are what he needs her to be. They have no time for frivolous, self-indulgent distractions, now more than ever.) 

Riza delivers a batch of transfer-related paperwork to his desk one Friday afternoon. “Thanks,” Roy says, after ending his conversation on the phone with Major Armstrong. “I’ll pick you up at eighteen-thirty tomorrow for our dinner with Grumman.” 

Riza is so preoccupied with thinking about her next tasks that it takes her a moment to realize what he had said. “I understand if you can’t make it tomorrow, Colonel. You’ve had a lot on your mind lately.”

“It’s fine.” Roy looks out the window, his expression distant. “This will probably be our last chance to see Grumman for a while. Once we transfer to Central, we won’t have much occasion or time for trips to East City, even on the weekends for leisure.”

Roy says the last word with such grimness that Riza knows that there will be no leisure, no rest, no respite, for him until Hughes’ murder is solved. “Of course, sir.” She inclines her head. “Thank you.” 

Riza returns to her desk, and to her work. She knows a moment of sorrow, her chest tightening at the thought of her impending farewells to Rebecca and Grumman. There will be no more weekly dinners or weekend brunches with Rebecca, or monthly dinners at Grumman’s manor, but Riza puts that out of her mind as best as she can. She had vowed to follow Roy anywhere, even into hell itself. That means making sacrifices. (And honestly, she knows that these sacrifices are just the beginning.)

\- 

Dinner with Grumman the following night has the air of a war council meeting. Grumman imparts every bit of knowledge he has about senior staff at Central Command. They take it all in, listening intently. 

“Be careful,” Grumman warns, at last. His gaze lingers on Roy, without a trace of his usual levity and good humor. “Central Command is a den of serpents at the best of times. If something is truly as amiss as you fear, you’ll have to tread very carefully to keep from arousing suspicion.”

“Yes, sir.” Roy nods, but Riza can tell that he’ll brush off the warning when they are actually embedded within Central Command. Roy has been patient and calculating for years, with regards to his plan to become Fuhrer. She’s seen little of that patience when the two of them have discussed how to investigate Hughes’ murder. _We have to move swiftly, Hawkeye,_ he has told her, a few times. _Waiting a few months, or longer, to begin the true scope of our work in Central isn’t an option. Every week that goes by gives whoever is at the center of this conspiracy more time and more opportunity to bury it._

“Riza.” Grumman rises, and holds his arm out to her. “May I have a word with you in my study?”

Roy retreats to the library, and Riza and Grumman settle in his study, as they have every month for years now. Grumman pours her a glass of wine, which Riza accepts gratefully. She takes a sip of the vintage red, while Grumman leaves his glass untouched on the side table, regarding her in silence.

“Your Colonel,” he says, eventually, “has the look of a man very close to throwing caution to the wind.”

Riza sets her glass down, and stares at her hand, fingers curled around the long stem of the glass. “I won’t allow it to get to that point, sir.”

Grumman pauses again, as if choosing his words very carefully. “I’ll be honest with you, my dear. I don’t like this. I considered refusing to sign off on your transfer.”

Riza looks up sharply, and her grandfather sighs, lifting a hand to forestall her reply. “But I had no desire for history to repeat itself.”

For the first time, Riza sees the parallel. Her mother, too, had been in love with a brilliant alchemist with great ambitions. The first Flame Alchemist. It’s an unsettling realization. “Thank you,” she manages to say. 

Grumman reaches out, and after a moment of hesitation, Riza puts her hand in his. “Mustang won’t hesitate to burn it all down,” he observes, with some regret. “Such is the rash impulsiveness of youth. Make sure that you don’t get caught in the flames, my dear.” 

The warning chills her. Riza nods, without a word.

They talk for some time, Grumman inquiring about where she’s secured new accommodations, and Riza writes her new address down for him. They rise from their armchairs when the clock strikes twenty-two hundred hours. “I don’t want to keep you too late.” Grumman smooths his dinner jacket, and then holds his arms out to her.

Riza embraces him, and she’s surprised by the lump that rises in her throat. She knows that this reassignment to Central is the beginning of Roy’s endgame - coming more than a decade earlier than the two of them had planned. No matter how things unfold from here, the two of them won’t return to East City. _Two years from now,_ Roy commented last night, twirling his pen through his fingers, _I could be Fuhrer._

(Or they could both be dead, shot for treason, or murdered in a phone booth outside of Central Command.) 

They had left the worst-case scenario, and the implications of the best-case scenario (the handover of power; the trials; the jail cell; the firing squad), left unsaid. 

“I’ll miss you, Grandfather,” Riza says softly. She had never expected this, when Grumman told her the truth about their familial connection. This has been the strangest surprise of her entire life. 

“And I you, Riza.” Grumman pulls back, and pats her on the shoulder, a little shakily. 

They make their way to the library. Roy is standing in front of the fireplace, staring into its flickering depths. He looks over at the two of them as they approach him, arm-in-arm. For a second, his expression softens. 

“Well,” Grumman says, in an approximation of his usual, jovial tone, releasing her. “She’s all yours.” 

Riza catches a glimpse of something unreadable in Roy’s eyes.

Grumman walks them to the door. He rests a hand on her arm, and then claps Roy on the shoulder so hard that the younger man winces. “Take care of my granddaughter, Mustang,” he instructs. “That’s an order.”

Riza sighs at her grandfather, and she expects Roy to return with a smart quip, as he usually does. Instead, he looks between her and Grumman as if stricken by the comment, before straightening his expression. “Of course, sir.” 

They step out into the warm summer night, making their way over to the drive where Roy had parked his car. Riza can’t help but think back to every other time they’ve done this, and there’s that sorrow again, washing over her with even more intensity this time. _Please let this not be the last time,_ she thinks, and she remembers Hughes’ last visit to East City. None of them could have guessed that was the last time they would all have lunch together in the mess hall. 

“I will, you know.” 

Roy’s words break her out of her reverie, and Riza glances at him, startled. “What?”

He stares straight ahead, and she can see the tension, the stiffness, in his shoulders. “I _will_ protect you. And everyone else. Nothing will happen to any of you, I swear it. You won’t…” Roy’s voice catches in his throat. “None of you will end up like Hughes.”

Riza remains quiet. She wants to assure him that he hadn’t failed, with Hughes, that none of what had happened was his fault, but she knows he won’t hear it. Just as he hasn’t in the past. Finally, she reaches out and places a hand on his arm, above his elbow, for just a moment. A brief touch entirely within the bounds of professional propriety. “We’ll protect you too, Colonel. Always.”

Roy flexes his hand. “Thank you, Lieutenant.”

They walk back to his car in silence. 

* * *

_to be continued_   
  


* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last time I posted a chapter, I did some commentary & author's notes on the chapter, which was fun for me. I thought I would include that on here this time.
> 
> I hope people aren't too frustrated with the slow burn. I do want to be mindful of the fact that Roy is literally Riza's boss/commanding officer, hence their very real reservations about getting involved (even though they do push the boundaries at times). It's also been fascinating to write about how they've developed a relationship over years without ever being physical with one another in the conventional sense.
> 
> It was interesting to write about the development of Riza's feelings about Roy. She acknowledges romantic feelings for him in the previous chapter, but her desire for him doesn't become physical/sexual until this chapter. For years, Riza has had issues with sex and her sexuality, using sex not as an act of desire as it traditionally is, or an act of love, or even an act of lust to fulfill a sex drive - but just as a means for validation and comfort. The fact that she could finally make a connection between sex and desire was a big step for her. 
> 
> I loved writing the Black Hayate part of this chapter because it was the last moment of happiness we got before things took a turn for the worse.
> 
> Additionally, parts of the dialogue from the Black Hayate segment of this chapter were adapted from the manga; they are not original content. 
> 
> A final note: During the scene where Roy comforts Riza after they make the discovery about the Tuckers, Roy calls Riza "my heart" in Xingese.
> 
> I hope that you enjoyed reading. There was a lot going on in this chapter - please let me know what you think. I love and deeply appreciate comments.


	8. eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Important note: Excerpts of the dialogue in this chapter are taken from the manga and Brotherhood; they are not original content.

The details of planning the unit’s transfer to Central Command take weeks to hammer out. Riza spends her days coordinating the professional details of the personnel transfer of six officers. Then she comes home, already exhausted, to work on packing up six years of her life. 

The morning of June 17, 1914, isn’t as hectic as it could have been. Riza had organized a transportation service to collect all of her personal belongings, as well as Roy’s, Breda’s, Havoc’s, Falman’s, and Fuery’s, and transport them from East City to Central. Luckily, the service had been able to pick up all of their boxes the previous evening, so none of them had to worry about that this morning. All they had to do was show up at the East City Station on time for their train at eight-hundred hours.

Thankfully, they’re all here, even Roy - on time, for the second time in his life. Even after six years with her unit, Riza is a little surprised at how jovial the mood is; at the excitement that hangs in the air. No one else seems to feel the apprehension she does at the transfer to Central Command, or her sorrow at leaving East City. 

Falman leans against a stone pillar, alternating between memorizing a map of the area surrounding Central Command, and memorizing a staff directory of all personnel at Central Command. “I want to be prepared,” he explains to her earnestly, before pointing out an eatery a few blocks from Central Command. “Capriotti’s Sandwich Shop. They might have your lobster rolls there.”

Havoc and Breda stand a short distance away from Falman, animatedly discussing Central City’s ice hockey leagues. Roy and Fuery linger at the edge of the platform, immersed in quiet conversation. Riza had heard them a few minutes ago, whispering about the feasibility of discreetly planting surveillance bugs within the offices of certain senior staff members at Central Command. The conversation made her raise an eyebrow, though she hadn’t had time to intercede at the moment. It’s far too bold and risky a maneuver. But that is an issue to be dealt with at another time, perhaps on the train ride over to Central City.

Rebecca gives Black Hayate a cuddle, and then gently sets him back down on the platform. “Take care of your master, Black Hayate,” Rebecca advises the dog, with mock seriousness. “Make sure she gets out of the office for some fresh air every now and then. I’ll expect reports from you every few months.”

Black Hayate barks at Rebecca in apparent assent, wagging his tail excitedly, and Rebecca and Riza both laugh.

They move toward each other at the same time and embrace, holding one another close. Riza rests her chin on Rebecca’s shoulder, and she’s unprepared for the deep sense of grief that washes over her. With the exception of her months in Ishval, Rebecca has been a part of her day-to-day life since they were both seventeen. For eight years, now. Even when she had been in Ishval, Rebecca wrote to her twice a month, every month. She didn’t have to do that, but she did. Riza can’t imagine not seeing Rebecca at lunch in the mess hall; not walking to work together a few times a week. Not having their dinners or brunches or shopping trips. 

Rebecca pulls back, and looks up at her. “You’re probably tired of hearing this from the old man and I, but please be careful,” she urges quietly, before forcing a smile. “And take some time off! Central has the best bars and nightclubs in the country, after all.”

Riza takes a deep breath, feeling her throat grow tight. “I’ll miss you.”

Rebecca’s eyes shine with unshed tears, and she blinks hard. “I’ll miss you too.”

“You’ll always have a place to stay when you’re in the capital.” Riza looks away, down at Black Hayate, in an attempt to regain her composure. 

“Thank you.” Rebecca sniffles, and then smiles again, this time more genuinely, her usual spirit returning. “And could you try to find me a nice man from Central? I haven’t met a single man in East City who’s made an impression on me.” 

“Oh, really?” Riza says, keeping a very straight face. She throws a significant glance over her shoulder, to where Havoc and Breda are now embroiled in a debate about the Panthers versus the Red Wings.

Rebecca turns beet-red and smacks her lightly in the arm. “You’re awful, Hawkeye!”

“And you’re going to be late to work, Catalina.” Riza smiles. 

Rebecca glances at her watch, and groans. “Call me tonight and give me your new phone number, okay? I have to run.”

They exchange a quick hug, and then Rebecca dashes off, disappearing into the crowd. Riza sighs, before turning back to her unit. She looks at each one of them in turn. Even though she has been struggling with leaving East City, her home for the past six years - the place where she had grown from a traumatized shell of a young woman to the confident, capable Lieutenant and person she is now - at least she isn’t making this journey into the unknown alone. She will have her unit, her family, alongside her every step of the way. No matter what lies ahead. That knowledge comforts her, reassures her, and Riza draws it around her like a warm cardigan.

“Lieutenant,” Roy calls. He’s still standing with Fuery. “Come here. We could use your opinion on something.”

Riza goes to join them, Black Hayate at her side.

-

They report for their first day at Central Command that afternoon at thirteen-hundred hours. Roy, Falman, Fuery, Breda, and Havoc take time to establish their new office, unpacking their things, setting up their desks, and discussing the unit’s next steps. Riza sits at her desk, working through the files of administrative paperwork and transfer procedures that had been awaiting her, delivered by a corporal from Central’s personnel office. She listens to her unit’s conversation but doesn’t participate, and works steadily, ignoring the occasional pangs of hunger that grip her stomach. Black Hayate trots around the new office, investigating the unfamiliar space. 

Riza has spent her entire career at East City Command, outside of occasional trips to Central Command with Roy for a few days or a week at a time. Such short exposure to Central Command’s ecosystem, its complicated web of interpersonal and professional politics, isn’t adequate - even coupled with the intelligence and insights that Grumman, Hughes, and Roy’s informants have passed along to them over the years. 

Riza knows that the first thing she has to do is get a sense of the new ecosystem that they have all found themselves in. She isn’t normally one to socialize with military personnel outside of her unit, but in the mess hall at lunch, at the practice range after work, she makes an effort to become acquainted with the staff of other officers at Central Command. Especially the other officers’ assistants, and anyone who could be in a position to know anything interesting about their commanding officers. 

Second Lieutenant Maria Ross and Sergeant Denny Brosh, on Major Armstrong’s staff, strike Riza as trustworthy. She’s always had a good feeling about them, based on their few previous interactions when she’s worked in Central. She passes this information on to Roy. 

Havoc, Breda, Falman, and Fuery conduct their own, similar investigations, getting to know their counterparts from other units. They funnel the information to Roy, just as she does. Havoc befriends a Captain on General Varland’s staff and casually mentions that a certain hostess bar on the Upper East Side has the most beautiful women he’s ever seen. The captain passes that knowledge on to everyone else on General Varland’s staff, and the tips from Roy’s informants begin to flow in at a steady rate. 

Work keeps Riza busy, as well. Their assigned work, as well as the true reason they are in Central. She serves as a sounding board to Roy as he discusses his plans, both alone with her and with the rest of the unit, at late-night meetings at their apartments. She feels so run ragged, so profoundly exhausted, that she barely has the energy to unpack three boxes’ worth of clothes and kitchen supplies at her apartment. Riza leaves the rest of the boxes untouched, and falls asleep as soon as her head hits her pillow every night. 

It’s unusual for her. It’s far more typical for her to lie awake at night, ruminating over the day’s events and her concerns about what the next day holds. The worries creep into other parts of Riza’s day, instead. When she walks to work; when she’s in line at the mess hall, trying to put on a pleasant, casual veneer and chat with the soldiers next to her; when she’s between phone calls or sorting out the day’s tasks for the unit to work through. 

Falman, Fuery, Breda, and Havoc seem to have adjusted well to Central City and Central Command. They’ve responded gamely to the demands of Roy’s new assignments for them. They see uncovering the details of the potential conspiracy at Central Command, and solving the mystery of Hughes’ murder, as challenges that they are eager to face. Both out of loyalty to Roy, because those causes are important to him, and because they feel strongly about the issues in their own right. Their morale remains high. They don’t seem afraid of what they could uncover, and the risks inherent in what they are doing. None of that surprises her. That’s the caliber of men they are. 

It’s Roy that Riza worries about. He’s as perfectly charming as ever to the staff at Central Command, from the highest-ranking generals, to the mid-level Captains and Lieutenants who comprise most of Central’s personnel, to the secretaries, janitors, and administrative assistants that keep the center running smoothly. Roy is all bright smiles and easy laughs and jokes and wit with them, presenting a perfect picture of an easygoing, relaxed, carefree Colonel. The second he steps back into the privacy of their unit’s office, the smiles fall away, the expression in his eyes darkening, as he strides to his desk and pulls out his notebook. 

He’s tense. Riza sees it in the set of Roy’s features; the tightness of his jaw; the stiffness of his shoulders. She catches him rubbing his neck and shoulders a few times a day. She gently (and not-so-gently) encourages him to take some painkillers or a stretching break every now and then. Roy brushes her off in a way he never has before, and he doesn’t tease her about her concern - just tells her brusquely not to worry about him, and that he’ll be fine. 

(Riza tries not to take it personally. Tries not to miss the way this conversation would have wandered into banter and teasing three months ago.  _ I’m not like Havoc, Hawkeye. I’m strong enough that I don’t need painkillers,  _ Roy used to insist, rolling his shoulders, massaging his own neck. Riza used to eye him, unimpressed, curbing her temptation to rub his neck for him.  _ You’re being ridiculous, Colonel. _ ) 

Riza remembers how Roy would languidly recline in his office chair in East City, hands behind his head, slouched, occasionally with his feet thrown up on his desk (which had been, frankly, appalling). Now he can’t seem to sit still for long. He paces restlessly more often than not, and even when he does sit, his fingers tap a compulsive rhythm against whatever hard surface is at hand. 

Despite all of that restless energy, he seems to be getting by on even less sleep than he had in the past. He’s the first one in the office these days, every single day, already standing and staring out the window by the time Riza steps inside for the morning. They used to leave work together almost every night, but whenever she glances at the clock, remembering Black Hayate waiting at her apartment, and asks her Colonel if he will be leaving soon, he shakes his head. 

“I’ll stay too, then,” Riza offers, as she always does. It makes her uncomfortable to think of Roy alone with his thoughts, as the hour grows late and the sky darkens outside. She’s found him in the evenings before, standing in the archives room where Hughes had been attacked; pacing the course Hughes had taken from the archives to the phone booth where he had placed his last phone call to Roy. 

One time, she found Roy just standing outside of Hughes’ old office, staring at the new name plate on the door. “Lieutenant Colonel Nathaniel Finnegan,” he muttered to her, when she came to join him. “He was a Major in Hughes’ department. He’s benefited from Hughes’ death with this recent promotion. We’ll have to look into him as well.”

Riza looked down the hallway to ensure they were alone, and placed a hand on his elbow. “Colonel,” she murmured, feeling her chest tighten. “Let’s go back to the office. Breda is waiting for us.”

Roy didn’t move a muscle. “He’s been replaced so easily. Forgotten.” And he closed his eyes, looking suddenly weary. “But Gracia and Elicia aren’t able to forget. And neither will I.”

It’s all of that on Riza’s mind when she offers to stay, now. Roy looks at her, an unreadable expression on his face, and shakes his head. “Black Hayate will be waiting for you. I’ll be fine here.”

“Colonel--” Riza stops herself. She’s tried to address her concerns with Roy before.  _ I’m worried about you,  _ she’s said, bluntly, or  _ I’m here for you, if you want to talk.  _ Each time, he’s brushed her off.  _ Don’t worry about me, Hawkeye. I’m fine.  _

_ Sir-- _

and he’s interrupted her, redirecting the conversation to something or another, leaving Riza biting back her frustration. But she knows, from all the times she’s been on the other side of this conversation with Rebecca, that there is no forcing someone to talk. To share what they carry on their mind. There is pain felt so deeply that there is no hope of talking about it. There is pain felt so deeply that the act of speaking of it with others, no matter how trusted or beloved, will reopen those raw, weeping sounds.

Riza tries to remember, again, that the fact that Roy won’t talk to her is nothing personal. She loves Rebecca as a sister. There’s still so much about Ishval, about the coping mechanism she had found in the time after Ishval, that she had never been able to tell Rebecca. 

“Call me when you get home,” Roy instructs.

“Yes, sir.” 

It’s a new protocol that he had put in place, on their unit’s first day at Central. Everyone is under orders to call him as soon as they are home for the night.  _ Regardless of the hour,  _ Roy pressed.

Once, Havoc would have teased him, saying that Roy was being “as clingy as a girl.” Riza would have narrowed her eyes at Havoc, while Fuery looked alarmed at Havoc’s misstep.  _ How would you know, Jean?  _ Breda would have smirked.  _ It’s not like girls call you back. _ Falman would intercede on her behalf, saying that there was no empirical evidence to prove that either gender tended to be more attached than the other, and Havoc would glare around at all of them and pronounce them  _ the worst. _

In this darker time, this time post-Hughes, the unit had averted their eyes from their commanding officer, and no one said anything except  _ yes, sir.  _

Riza turns to leave. 

“Lieutenant,” Roy says. She looks over her shoulder to see him standing, shrugging on his coat. “I’ll drive you home. It’s starting to get dark.”

“That’s not necessary, Colonel.” Riza rests her hand on the doorframe. “I have my weapon on me.”

So had Hughes. The words hang between them, unsaid. A flicker of pain crosses Roy’s features, hastily concealed. “It’s fine. You’ll be able to get back to Black Hayate sooner this way.”

“I can’t argue with that.” Riza thinks of her dog, and smiles. “You know the way to my heart, Colonel.”

Roy gives her a small, genuine smile. It’s something she’s barely seen over the past weeks, and Riza treasures it. “I’ve known you for a long time, after all.” 

He locks up the drawers to his desk (something he had never done at East City Command) and the office, and they walk out to his car. “It’s a nice evening,” Roy remarks, tilting his face up to the twilight sky. The words are spoken in the slightly awed fashion of someone who hasn’t gotten any significant amount of fresh air or natural light in far too long. 

“It’s cooler here than it was back home. I miss East City, but this weather agrees with me.” Riza doesn’t like the heat. It reminds her of Ishval, and when the temperature gets too high, the burn scars on her back grow stiff and sensitive. 

Roy throws her a glance of silent understanding as they get into his car. He has seen her discomfort in East City summers. He has bought her tins of aloe vera gel, and told her, unable to quite make eye contact, to leave it in the refrigerator for a day before applying it to her skin. “I’m glad that Central has that one perk for you, at least.”

They lapse into silence for a short while. “I’m sorry that you miss East City,” Roy says, after a while. 

Riza regrets bringing it up. It feels petty that she mourns the loss of her old home, of Grumman and Rebecca, while Roy mourns the loss of his best friend, who will never return to him. His loss is so much greater than hers. “It’s all right,” she replies, as easily as she can. “I’ll adjust in another couple of weeks. Besides, there’s a nice park for Black Hayate and I near our apartment, much larger than the one we went to in East City.”

“Be careful walking there at night,” Roy reminds her automatically, and he taps his thumb against the steering wheel in an anxious gesture she knows too well. Then he sighs. “Sorry. You’re not a child. I shouldn’t treat you like one.”

“Don’t apologize, sir,” Riza says softly. “I understand.”

“You always do.” The words are gently spoken, in a way that Riza rarely hears from him these days. 

Her apartment isn’t far from Central Command. Roy lives just a block from her, as do the rest of the unit. They had been very intentional about finding apartments close to one another in case of any emergencies. He parks the car and walks her up the four flights of stairs to her apartment, all the way to her door, even though Riza’s apartment building is composed mostly of retirees and she’s fairly certain that no harm will befall her here. 

They hear a small, excited bark as they approach her door. Riza can imagine Black Hayate standing on the other side, wagging his tail, lifting first one paw off the floor and then the other in anticipation of seeing her again. Roy puts his hands in his pockets as she pulls out her keys. “It must be nice to have someone waiting for you every day when you get home.”

There’s a hint of envy in his tone. Riza thinks, not for the first time, that he would benefit from having a dog. It would be someone to keep him company; someone to ensure that he gets out of the house for a walk twice a day. “It is. It’s changed my life.” 

She opens the door, and Black Hayate greets her with polite exuberance before heading straight for Roy. Roy smiles, the expression reaching his eyes, as he steps inside to stroke the soft fur on the dog’s head. “Hello, Second Lieutenant. It’s been a while.”

Riza leans against the wall, and she can’t help but smile at the sight of Roy petting Hayate. Her dog prances around him with the air of someone seeing a beloved friend after a long separation. Her Colonel is so good with Hayate, even though he’s never had a pet of his own. 

Roy finally straightens, with some reluctance. “Well, I should get back to the office.”

“You could have dinner first, if you want.” The impulsive offer takes Riza by surprise, and she turns toward the kitchen, trying to hide how flustered she suddenly feels. She hadn’t planned on inviting him to stay for dinner. She’d been carried away, uncharacteristically, by the sight of Roy with Black Hayate. (By the thought that Hayate seemed as happy to welcome Roy home as he had for her. By the thought that it would be nice if both of them were coming home together for the night, to an apartment that was  _ theirs  _ and not just hers.) 

“I don’t want to impose.” Roy makes no move to leave, though. He looks toward the kitchen longingly, and now that Riza thinks about it, all both of them had for lunch today were slightly stale bagels with cream cheese, devoured in a five-minute break between meetings. 

“It’s not an imposition,” she assures him. “I made food last night, so all I need to do is heat it up - pesto pasta with mushrooms and summer squash.”

“All right, then,” Roy says, giving in. “If I’m not inconveniencing you. Can I do anything to help?” He shoots her a wry look. “I am good at heating things up, after all.”

Riza rolls her eyes. “The stove will be fine, Colonel. Just make yourself comfortable while I get things ready.”

Roy wanders into the living room, asking Black Hayate in a serious tone what work he has accomplished today. Riza puts the pasta and sauce on the stove to warm, measures food into Black Hayate’s bowl, and then heads into her bedroom, nudging the door shut with her hip. She lets her hair down from its clip and exhales in relief as she sheds her uniform and undershirt. She rifles through the clothing in her closet, and pulls on a sleeveless pink top and a knee-length skirt, loose and flowing, in white eyelet lace. Even though it’s not as warm here as it had been in East City, it’s still a mercy to wear something cooler than the heavy blue wool of the military uniform.

Riza returns to the kitchen, and ladles the pasta and sauce into two bowls. It’s nice to have company for dinner. She used to cook dinner for Rebecca every couple of weeks back in East City, and she’d loved going out for dinner with her unit or at Grandfather’s manor. Eating alone with a book or magazine, even with Black Hayate curled at her feet, sometimes makes her remember the lonely years of her childhood in Hawkeye Manor after Mother had passed.

Riza carries the bowls out to the living room, and then blinks, taken aback. 

Roy is settled on the sofa, legs thrown up on the battered coffee table, arms crossed over his chest, sound asleep. He had shed his overcoat and his uniform coat, and rolled the sleeves of his white dress shirt up to the elbows. His head is tucked against the sofa cushion, and Black Hayate sits nestled beside him. 

Riza’s heart sinks as she considers how weary her Colonel must have been to fall asleep so quickly. His skin is paler than usual, lacking the normal slight tan it picks up in summer, which just makes the dark circles under his eyes stand out more. She hasn’t seen him look this drained since Ishval. 

She hesitates, torn on whether to wake him or not. Roy had said he wanted to return to the office, after all, but he clearly needs the rest. Riza takes the bowls back into the kitchen and covers them, before writing a note and leaving it on the coffee table.  _ Walking Hayate. There’s food in the kitchen.  _

Roy doesn’t stir, even when the air-conditioner clicks on. Riza retrieves the light blanket thrown over the back of the sofa, and carefully settles it over him, her cheeks burning at the unusual proximity and the intimacy of the gesture. Her fingers tingle with the entirely inappropriate urge to smooth through his hair. Riza represses the desire to curl up beside him, rest her head against his shoulder, and settle in for a nap of her own. 

“Come,” Riza whispers to Black Hayate. Without making a sound, he jumps off the sofa and waits by the door for her to put on his lead.

They go for a leisurely circuit around the park. Riza stays vigilant, mindful of the weight of her gun at her thigh holster, but it’s a peaceful night, and they return without event. She unlocks her apartment, expecting that Roy would have woken up, eaten dinner, and left, but he’s still on the sofa, still asleep. 

Riza glances at the clock. It’s half past twenty-hundred hours, and she’s starving, and he must be too. Besides, as much as she doesn’t mind it, it would still be improper if he spent the night at her apartment. If anyone saw him leaving her apartment building in the morning… 

“Colonel,” Riza says softly. Roy doesn’t move. She tries again. “Roy.”

No response. 

Black Hayate solves the problem, leaping up on the sofa and licking Roy on the cheek. He comes awake with a start, looking around as if slightly disoriented, and Riza sighs, mortified at her dog’s behavior. “Sorry about that, Colonel. Don’t do that, Black Hayate.” 

“What - no - it’s fine.” Roy scratches Black Hayate on the head, and then runs a hand through his own hair, mussing it further. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep like that. Have you eaten?”

Riza shakes her head, rising and returning to the kitchen for their food. “I took Black Hayate out.”

“I didn’t mean to delay your dinner, Lieutenant. I’m sorry.” Roy downs the glass of water she brings him in one long draught, before gratefully accepting the bowl of pasta. “This smells incredible.”

“Thank you, sir. It was in my mother’s recipe book.” Riza pauses, not wanting to pry. “You must have been exhausted.”

Roy nods, after a moment. “I guess that I haven’t been sleeping much lately.” 

They are silent for a little while, and Riza doesn’t push. Finally, Roy speaks again, clearing his throat somewhat awkwardly. “Do you remember what we talked about once, back in East City, during your first autumn on the unit? When you weren’t sleeping well?”

“I remember.” Riza spears a piece of summer squash with her fork. “It was excellent advice. I’ve done what you suggested almost every night since then.” Held onto the memories of the good, comforting moments in her life, using them as a talisman to keep the memories and nightmares of Ishval and the time afterwards at bay. 

“I’m glad it was helpful for you.” Roy’s shoulders slump as he leans back against the sofa cushions. “I can’t do that anymore, Hawkeye,” he admits, in a rare moment of candor. “Almost every good memory I have of the past is tainted. Because that was a time when--”

He stops abruptly, and swallows hard. “When Hughes was alive. I used to remember our days in the Academy, and his wedding, and the times we’d go out drinking, and… I can’t think about any of that, now. Even when I try to think of the unit, and of you, back in East City, before all of this, I - I always remember that it was  _ before _ . Before everything changed.”

Roy turns away from her, as if embarrassed by the disclosure. Riza sets her bowl down, and she isn’t sure whether reaching out to touch his arm would just make him more self-conscious. She clasps her hands together to avoid the temptation. 

“I know it isn’t the same,” she starts. “But after my mother passed, I couldn’t think of her, and the things we did together, without just being…” Riza falters, remembering the five-year-old she was; the little girl who would curl up under the covers and weep so hard she shook, clutching her stuffed dog. “It destroyed me, Colonel. But in time, I found myself able to remember Mother without breaking apart. Eventually, I could think back to the time we had together, and smile. You’ll come to that point with your memories of Hughes, someday.”

“I hope so,” Roy says, even though he seems anything but hopeful. “When I find justice for him.”

They eat in silence for some time. Finally, Roy gestures around her apartment, at the boxes piled up in the living room and lining the hallway. “I see you’ve unpacked as much as I have.”

“There hasn’t been much time. I’ve barely even stocked my refrigerator.” 

“I see.” Roy finishes his bowl, and then takes her empty one. He heads to the kitchen and washes both, along with the pots for the pasta and the sauce.

“You don’t have to do that, Colonel,” Riza protests, standing up and following him to the kitchen. 

“You cooked for us,” he responds, scrubbing one of the pots clean. “So this is the least I can do.”

The words leave her speechless for just a second. It’s a striking, uncanny echo of the exchange they used to have at Hawkeye Manor, when she had been twelve and he had been sixteen, a newly arrived alchemy apprentice. Roy glances at her a moment later. Riza can tell, by the look on his face, that he has remembered the same thing she had.

“Some things never change, I guess,” he says quietly. 

Riza remembers her father, and those years of crushing solitude. She pushes the memories away just as quickly as they had arisen. “And some things do. Thankfully.”

Roy finishes up in the kitchen, and then picks up his uniform coat and overcoat again, pulling both on as he heads to the door. He looks out at the night sky with some reluctance. “Well, I guess I have to get back to it.”

She can speak from the perspective of his bodyguard, if not as his friend (or anything else). “I don’t like the thought of you alone at Central Command at this hour, Colonel. Could you do whatever work you need from home?”

Roy hesitates, and then accedes. “All right. Oh, and Hawkeye?” He indicates their surroundings. “I’m giving you the day off tomorrow. Unpack, do some grocery shopping, relax.” 

“That’s not necessary, sir.”

“That’s an order." Roy’s tone brooks no argument. “We’ll get by for one day without you. I’ll call you if we need anything, and you should do the same.” 

Riza relents. “Fine. Sir.”

Roy smirks faintly at the reluctance in her voice, and then the expression softens into a genuine smile. He places a hand on her shoulder. “Thanks for dinner, Hawkeye. It was excellent.”

Riza wills herself not to blush like a teenage girl out on her first date. “Anytime, Colonel. Good night.”

And the impulse to rest her hand on his arm and give him a kiss good night, something small and chaste and sweet, like a wife would give to her husband before they head their separate ways for the workday ahead, is nearly overwhelming. It’s just her mind playing tricks on her, lulled by the sense of domesticity of it all - her civilian clothes, their shared dinner, his doing the dishes for her and petting her dog, but for one second, that’s all Riza wants. She wants to kiss him good night, and she wants him to come back home to her tomorrow. She takes a small step back, startled by the intensity of the desire. 

Roy tells her to sleep well, and he leaves, leaving her and Black Hayate alone in the apartment. Riza rests her hand on the closed door for just a moment, and Black Hayate comes to sit at her feet.

She sinks down, and wraps her arms around his neck, hugging him close.

-

Riza sleeps until almost noon the following day, something she hasn’t done in years. She takes Black Hayate for a long walk, and then stops at a cafe near the park for brunch, sitting outdoors on the patio while Black Hayate curls up at her feet. For the first time in several weeks (for the first time since Edward had called her from the Tucker manor in East City), she feels like she has a moment to breathe. The ever-present tightness in her chest loosens somewhat, and Riza savors her fried egg sandwich and the sweetness of her iced jasmine tea.

She returns home and unpacks another couple of boxes, listening to a radio drama as she works. It’s dark by the time she remembers that she still has a trip to the grocery store to make.

Central’s grocery stores are as dog-friendly as the ones in East City had been, thankfully. Black Hayate accompanies her, and Riza heads home just after nineteen-hundred hours, carrying a bag full of groceries. 

They enter an alley, a shortcut home to her apartment. Black Hayate suddenly stiffens on his lead, leaps backward, and growls into the shadows, his hackles rising. “Black Hayate?” Riza tilts her head to the side, puzzled. He’s well-trained enough that he never reacts like this to any provocation or stimulus short of a legitimate threat. She doesn’t see any movement in the alley, or any hint of what had provoked him. “What’s gotten into you?”

A low, sinister laugh emanates from the shadows, as a massive, hulking figure steps into her line of sight. His eyes glow an inhuman red, and he clutches a butcher’s cleaver. “It’s dangerous to be out walking the streets alone at this hour.”

Riza drops Hayate’s lead, narrowing her eyes at her would-be assailant.  _ What if _ \-- She abandons the thought as quickly as it had occurred. No. This thing, whatever it is (it claims to be Barry the Chopper, but that’s impossible; Barry the Chopper is dead) is carrying a cleaver. Hughes’ cause of death had been a gunshot wound. 

The impostor lunges toward her. Riza draws the gun holstered at her thigh, firing at it several times in quick succession. He topples to the ground with an indignant shriek, but there’s no blood. The bullets ricochet off him with a  _ clang,  _ as if his flesh is made of metal. He climbs to his feet, incensed, unfazed, and lifts his mask free of his head.

Revealing nothing underneath. Just an empty suit of armor. Riza freezes for a split second before firing off another few shots, even though she knows they won’t do much good. She’s only seen an animate suit of armor once before. 

“How come you’re not paralyzed with fear?” the suit of armor asks, now sounding more irritated than menacing. 

Riza keeps her gun trained on him. “You actually remind me of someone else I know.” She keeps her composure, as she always does; keeps her tone steady and her demeanor unruffled. Her mind races, notwithstanding her exterior calm. Her weapon isn’t much use against this thing. If he tries to attack her with that cleaver again, she and Black Hayate will have to make a run for it. 

“Let me guess,” the Chopper impostor taunts. “Alphonse something-or-other.”

Riza’s shoulders stiffen, and Black Hayate advances on the impostor. “You’ve met Alphonse before?” 

The impostor chuckles, all thoughts of savagely attacking her apparently forgotten for the moment. Black Hayate bites a chunk of his ragged clothing, tugging at it, but the impostor ignores him. “Is the guy a friend of yours?” He returns his grotesque head to his neck, jamming it into place gracelessly. 

“You could say that.” Riza studies him cautiously. “Look, whoever you are - I’m taking you into custody. There are some questions I want to ask you. Follow me.”

“Lady,” the impostor leers at her, before pulling himself upright. “I’ll follow you anywhere.”

Riza tightens her grip on her gun. 

-

She finds a pay phone on an empty street. The sight of the innocuous phone booth sends a tingle of foreboding down her spine, as phone booths have ever since Hughes’ murder. Riza enters, holding the impostor at a distance, and places a call to her Colonel. 

“Colonel,” she greets, a little breathless from the effort of keeping the impostor at bay. “Sorry to disturb you at work.” 

“Oh, Hawkeye, it’s you.” Roy sounds puzzled. “What is it? It’s your day off.” 

“I know, sir. I needed to let you know that I’ve captured something really…” Riza pauses, unable to find a better word for the situation. “Weird.”

“Weird?” Roy echoes, nonplussed. 

“Sweetie!” The impostor calls out to her. With a superhuman display of effort, Riza refrains from turning around and emptying her clip into his armor. 

“Who was that?” Roy demands. “Is someone bothering you?” 

“That’s him.” Riza sighs. “Can you come quickly, sir? I’m at the phone booth on the corner of Saffron and Brook.”

“I’ll be there right away. Don’t worry.” Roy hangs up, and Riza steps out of the phone booth, looking up and down the street warily. 

“Come on, sweetie,” the impostor purrs to her, in a vain attempt to be seductive. “Let me chop you up.”

Riza gives him the glare that has stopped every inappropriately flirtatious fellow soldier dead. “Not a chance.”

The impostor continues, undeterred. “Then what about that guy who’s coming here?” 

Black Hayate barks indignantly at him. “Oh,” Riza says, and a humorless smirk touches the corner of her lips. “I’d like to see you try.”

-

Roy’s car screeches up to the corner of Saffron and Brook in a matter of minutes, leaving the acrid scent of burning rubber lingering in the air. Falman and Roy leap out, Falman clearly perplexed by the nightmarish appearance of her captive, and Roy’s face looks like thunder. 

The impostor clings to her, wrapping his arms around her middle. Black Hayate sinks his teeth into his ragged clothing again, and Riza elbows him in the head. “Who’s the chump?” the impostor asks, unfazed by her strike. 

“Shut up." Riza looks back at Roy, flustered by this impostor’s strange fixation on her. “I’m sorry to bother you with this, Colonel.”

Roy doesn’t respond. He just stares at the impostor, who is still holding onto her, and pulls on first one ignition glove, and then the other. “Stand aside, Hawkeye,” he orders. “I’m going to set that thing on fire.” 

“Please calm down, Colonel,” Riza snaps, before he can strike. “He - it - this claims to be Barry the Chopper, but the Chopper was executed in 1912.”

A muscle in Roy’s jaw twitches. “Whoever you are, then, let go of the Lieutenant right now,” he orders, low and furious. “And get in the car. You’re coming with us.”

-

They drive to the warehouse that serves as their unit’s occasional safe house. The street is deserted, thankfully, as Roy shoves the impostor inside. Riza and Falman follow closely, and she turns to Black Hayate before they enter. “Stand guard, Black Hayate.”

Black Hayate sits down at once, facing the street. He’ll bark if anyone approaches.

“Sit,” Roy commands the impostor, pointing at a spot on the floor. “And don’t even think about trying anything funny. Now, who are you, and why are you claiming to be Barry the Chopper?” 

The impostor sinks down obediently. “I’m not  _ claiming  _ to be anything. I am the one, the only, Barry the Chopper!”

Roy and Riza both look at Falman. “There’s only one way to find out if he’s telling the truth,” Roy says, in an undertone. 

“I understand, Colonel.” Falman steps forward. “If you are Barry the Chopper, as you claim to be, who was your victim on the third of May, in the ninth year of your murder spree?”

“That was Reynolds.” The impostor, who might not be an impostor, offers his reply without hesitation. “I hacked him up behind the liquor warehouse in district five.”

Falman’s expression reveals nothing. “August twenty-ninth, year ten.”

“Hendrick. Said my meat was no good.” The suit of armor cackles. “Now who’s laughing, eh?”

“January fifth, year eight.”

“Lenny and Cynthia.” The armor’s disembodied voice takes on an almost longing note. “Only time I’ve killed two people in one night. Good workout.”

Riza crosses her arms over her chest in revulsion. Roy looks like he’s close to incinerating the suit of armor. Only Falman remains professionally detached. “What about the Gadriel incident on March third, year eleven?” 

Their suspect scoffs in disbelief. “I killed Gadriel on the thirteenth, you idiot, not the third! It was a beautiful full moon that night. The way the moonlight glistened in the pools of blood… You had to be there.”

It’s unprofessional conduct for an interrogation, but Riza’s temper frays. She picks up a metal pipe lying on the floor and strikes the suit of armor, dislodging his head from his neck. “Stop it!”

Roy doesn’t chastise her. “So, what do you think?” he asks Falman. 

“He didn’t fall for my trap.” Falman frowns. “If he knows this much, he might be the real thing.” 

“Come on, sweetie,” Barry the Chopper simpers, as he reattaches his head. “I was just kidding.”

Roy steps in front of her, shielding her from the Chopper’s line of sight. “Okay, I believe you’re the Chopper,” he says tersely. “But if you were supposed to have been executed, what are you doing here? And how is it that you have a body of armor?”

“Before I answer that, I have a question of my own,” Barry retorts. “You guys are all military, right? But you didn’t know that they put me in this body?” 

Roy’s expression is guarded. “That’s right.” 

“I see!” Barry crows. “So you don’t know anything about Laboratory Five either?” 

The location is strangely familiar to Riza, tugging at the corners of her memory. It’s something she had heard of back in East City, during the Scar investigation. She looks at Roy and then at Falman, to see if they remember it better than she does, but there’s no luck. 

“That Alphonse guy snuck in with his brother,” Barry explains impatiently. “That’s when I fought him. He was actually pretty good.”

Roy stands up straighter, and Riza can tell that he’s just remembered something. “Tell me more about that night.”

There’s a strange urgency to his voice. He’s showing his hand; being entirely too clear about the fact that this matter is of importance to him. Barry laughs, clearly having picked up on Roy’s lapse. “If you promise not to snitch on me to the guys who made me like this, I’ll tell you everything I know.”

“Fine,” Roy agrees, without hesitation. Riza turns to him, alarmed. 

Barry tells them a story so bizarre, so outlandish, that Riza and Falman can do nothing more than stare at Barry, and then at each other. Riza wraps her arms around herself. In all of her years in the military - in all of her years reading the newspapers, reading novels - she’s never heard a tale as twisted as this. 

A memory drifts to the forefront of her mind, of Nina and what her father had made her into. Riza fights back a shudder. Alchemy has done worse than the tale Barry has told them tonight. She had seen that horror firsthand; something beyond any story of nightmares told on the stage or on the page. After that, she can’t help but believe this. 

Her Colonel takes careful notes in his journal, not even looking up once as Barry speaks. “So, to sum up, Laboratory Five was being used to create Philosopher’s Stones, although the formula was still imperfect,” Roy muses. “The main ingredients were human beings. But the building collapsed, making it impossible for us to search for evidence.”

Riza looks away, hiding a grimace of disgust. The humans used as  _ ingredients  _ had been prisoners like Barry, men who had committed atrocities, men who had no respect for the sanctity of human life themselves… But that doesn’t make what had been done to them acceptable. 

“Military personnel and research were used in the project, which means Central Command must have been involved to some degree,” Roy finishes. “And you said that these individuals, Lust and Envy, were also involved. After you were executed, did those two transmute your soul into your current form?”

He says it so casually that it makes the hair on the back of Riza’s arms stand up. She isn’t religious, not after everything she has seen. Still, the thought of a human soul being something an alchemist could transmute, is something she can’t wrap her mind around. It’s just as incomprehensible as the idea of human lives being used to create a powerful artifact. No power, nothing, is worth that level of sacrifice. 

“Nah, that was the researchers’ job,” Barry says. “Plus, they didn’t kill me first. They sucked my soul from my body while I was still alive, and stuck it into this armor. I wish they had just executed me.” He shakes his armored head. “You can’t imagine the pain.” 

Falman crosses his arms over his chest, clearly uncomfortable. Riza knows that there are those who would believe that Barry deserved it, after the agony he had visited on so many innocents, but she still has to swallow down her nausea. Barry the Chopper deserved death. That was certain. He didn’t deserve to be a human experiment, just like the mice and flies and even the Xingese primates used in science and alchemy labs. 

“Should I look into this lab, sir?” Falman asks quietly. “Perhaps we can track down some of the personnel who worked there.”

“Not gonna happen,” Barry cuts in. “They were used as ingredients for the Stone themselves. It happened just a few days before the building collapsed. No one was left.” 

“So the scientists became ingredients in their own research.” Roy rests his chin in his hand, contemplating it. “How morbidly efficient.” 

It’s another twisted example of justice. The scientists who had experimented on prisoners met the same fate as their victims. Riza suddenly longs to be out of this dark, musty warehouse; out of Central City entirely; standing in a warm, sunny park in East City with Black Hayate and Rebecca. Before Nina. Before Hughes. Before tonight. 

“Does that mean that whoever is behind this doesn’t need to manufacture any more Philosopher’s Stones?” Riza asks. Faint hope stirs within her. It doesn’t bear contemplating; the idea that this kind of human experimentation and sacrifice is still going on, even right this moment, at other prisons around Central and Amestris.

“Oh, sweetie.” Barry shifts in his seat on the floor. “You don’t get these people at all, do you? One Philosopher’s Stone, and the power one stone brings, wasn’t enough. It would never be enough for them.”

Roy speaks, forestalling her reply. “I’ll ask you one last question for tonight, Barry the Chopper. Did you murder a military officer in a telephone booth a little over a month ago?”

Riza has seen Roy angry before. She’s seen him furious. She’s seen him enraged. But she’s never felt this kind of menace emanating from him. It takes a second for her to put a name to the effect it has on her. 

It’s fright. It  _ frightens  _ her, and that makes her feel cold all over. 

Riza glances at Falman out of the corner of her eye. He seems as rattled as she does. 

“Was he cut up?” Barry asks, bemused. “It wasn’t me.” 

“No.” Roy’s hands unclench from the fists they had curled into. “If you don’t know about it, that’s fine. Forget it.” 

He tries to dismiss Falman, but Falman refuses to go, and Riza smiles at him. He’s a good man, always calm and steady. Exactly what their unit needs in such fraught times. Finally, Roy charges Falman with the sole task of guarding Barry the Chopper, keeping him out of sight of the military and civilians alike. 

They leave Falman in the warehouse with the Chopper, an arrangement that Riza finds unsettling. “Sir,” she says, as they step out into the night. Black Hayate rises, immediately coming to join her. “Is this wise?” 

“Don’t worry, Lieutenant.” Roy opens her car door for her, and she can see the preoccupation in his eyes. “Falman will be fine.” 

“I’m not just concerned about Falman.” Riza settles herself in the passenger seat, and Black Hayate leaps inside, joining her. “What if the Chopper escapes? He had every intention of attacking me earlier this evening. He’s a danger to everyone in Central City. We shouldn’t be providing shelter for him. It’s too risky.”

Roy turns the key in the ignition, and the car purrs to life. “High risk, high reward,” he says simply, as they drive. “This is the breakthrough we’ve been looking for. We can use Barry as bait for Lust and Envy. Once we capture and interrogate them, we should have a lot more information to work with.”

“We know nothing about them, sir,” Riza argues. “They may not be so easy to capture, or to break.”

Roy exhales, blowing a lock of hair out of his eyes, a clear tell of impatience. “Have some faith, Lieutenant. In our unit’s capabilities, and in me, as your commanding officer.”

“I’ve had faith in you since the day we met.” It’s unlike her to snap like this, but the words had injured her (she  _ hates  _ being rebuked, for how small and ashamed it makes her feel, and it cuts her even deeper because it’s Roy, and Roy never has a harsh word for her) and Riza’s nerves are worn, after tonight, after the last several weeks, after everything. 

Roy’s fingers tighten around the steering wheel. “Then act like it.” 

Riza looks out the window, concealing her anger. Tears burn the back of her eyes, and they’re not angry tears. (They’re the tears of the little girl who had cried when Father was displeased with her.) Black Hayate nuzzles against her leg, and she leans down and strokes his head. 

They make the rest of the drive back to her apartment in tense silence, which is unusual, for them. Even when they had argued over the wisdom of Roy recruiting Edward into the military, those differences of opinion had been quickly smoothed over. 

Still, Roy walks her up to her apartment door, even though she has Black Hayate with her. Riza slips her key into the lock, and before she turns it, Roy places a hand on the door. He stares at it, as if unable to make eye contact with her. “I’m sorry your night off got ruined.”

“It’s fine. It led to a breakthrough for us.” Riza extends the words as a peace offering. “Good night, Colonel.”

Roy rests a hand on her shoulder for a moment. “Good night, Lieutenant.”

Riza enters her apartment, Black Hayate following close behind her. She is hollow with hunger, and worry. And more than anything else, she feels sick, after hearing what Barry the Chopper had told them about human sacrifices and experiments performed with the blessing of the military. She can’t stop thinking of men strapped down to metal tables, alchemists looming over them, deaf to their subjects’ pleas to stop. 

Riza sinks down on the sofa, and buries her head in her hands.

-

Her week doesn’t improve. Second Lieutenant Maria Ross is identified as a suspect in Hughes’ killing, and Roy hides the truth about Hughes from Edward, Alphonse, and Winry. The unit spends every night that follows in secret meetings detailing their plans for Maria Ross and for the Chopper. They return to their respective apartments close to midnight every night, and report to work seven hours later, pretending that nothing out of the ordinary is going on and revealing nothing about their discussions after hours.

There are a lot of aspects of both plans that don’t sit well with Riza. She remembers Roy’s reaction to the last time she had questioned his plans, and she holds her tongue. He knows her well enough to guess that something is amiss, though, and he breaks the silence between them as they walk home from Fuery’s apartment one night. 

“What is it, Lieutenant?” he asks wearily, slipping his hands into the pockets of his coat. 

Riza keeps her gaze trained straight ahead. Nobody needs to see them in each other’s company at twenty-three hundred hours, so they stick to alleyways and side streets, reminiscent of the dark passageway she had walked down on the night she encountered Barry the Chopper. “It’s nothing, sir.” 

“Don’t be coy, Hawkeye.” 

Riza raises an eyebrow, but lets the remark pass. “Do you think it’s wise to keep Edward in the dark about our plans for Ross?”

“It has to be done.” Roy shrugs. “He’s too young and hotheaded to be trusted with something of this magnitude.”

“That’s just it, Colonel,” Riza points out. “Because you don’t trust him with the truth, you’re going to act in a way that shatters his trust in you.”  _ Again,  _ she doesn’t say. Roy has already lied to Edward and Alphonse once. 

Roy’s steps don’t slow. “It can’t be helped. We have larger things to worry about than Fullmetal’s feelings. Besides, he’ll learn the truth soon enough.”

The impassive dismissal rubs her the wrong way. Riza stops, without making the conscious decision to. Roy notices and stops walking, turning back to look at her over his shoulder. “Come on,” he says. He sounds resigned, not impatient. “You should get some rest. The next couple of days are going to be big ones for us.”

Riza follows. 

-

Two days later, in front of the entire office, Riza asks her Colonel for a short vacation. She keeps her demeanor cool and her speech clipped, radiating discomfort with his rash actions in fatally attacking Second Lieutenant Ross during her escape from custody.

Roy accepts her request for leave. Riza strides out of the office.

-

She had prepared her materials the previous day. She heads to the abandoned radio tower near the apartment where Falman is guarding Barry, taking side streets the entire way, keeping her head down, and glancing around to ensure that no one is following her.

Riza climbs to the top of the old tower. Fuery’s communication array is waiting, as well as her old sniper rifle, the one she had used in Ishval. 

She’s cleaned and maintained it, and taken it to the range for practice, once a month for the past seven years. Keeping it in the best of shape, even though it hasn’t seen a day of real use since her last day in combat. Part of her still recoils from handling it, after everything she had done in Ishval.  _ Just in case,  _ Riza thought, every time she settled into position at the range, holding the rifle over her shoulder.  _ Just in case I ever have to pick up this particular weapon again, I want to be ready.  _

She sinks to her knees, now, and lifts and checks the rifle. Then she brings her eye to the scope and begins scanning the street below.

She hasn’t done this in years. She has always served as support on the ground to her unit during operations. They have never needed a sniper before. Riza’s stomach rebels against her light breakfast. The act of being here, in a tower, looking down over a city street… 

She sees people walking down below, civilians, and she remembers another time she had looked at civilians through the scope of this rifle and blown their heads apart with every  _ click  _ of her finger on the trigger. Black spots creep into her vision, and her head spins. Riza takes a deep breath, and then another, and another.  _ Get it together,  _ she orders herself. Her unit needs her. Falman and Havoc are counting on her for support and protection. 

_ Protection.  _ Riza clings to the thought. She’s providing protection. The sniper rifle in her hands is a tool she will use to protect; not something she will use to maim and kill. She’s not killing for the sake of killing. She will never have to do that again. 

That thought finally calms her. 

-

She calls Roy to check in throughout the day, using the Elizabeth alias that they have utilized on their previous undercover options. The sound of his voice, the light chatter, grounds her. Normally, Riza’s heart flutters at the flirtation necessary for this kind of undercover work. At the freedom to call Roy by his name; at the alternating heat and teasing and promise in his words and suggestions. 

_ (Why don’t you come over to my place after work, Roy? I miss you,  _ she’s said to him, uncomfortably aware of the truth in her words. 

_ I’ll be there in an hour, honey, and I’ll bring you some of those flowers you like,  _ he’s responded, soft and intimate, and Riza has closed her eyes, remembering that this is just part of a mission, nothing more. A maneuver that Roy would play with anyone; the other members of the unit and the rest of Madame Christmas’s informants alike. _ )  _

Today, Riza says her lines like an actress in a radio drama. Her mind remains detached. The stakes are higher than they ever have been. 

She’s on the line with Roy when the situation erupts at Falman’s apartment. She monitors the activity through her scope, and provides cover to Havoc and Falman as soon as they burst out into the street. Riza trains her rifle on Barry’s body, crouching low to the ground, moving like a feral animal. 

“I heard a loud noise,” Roy comments, so casually that others must be in the room with him. “What happened?”

“Nothing to worry about.” Riza doesn’t blink as she monitors the situation. “The customer was being mean to Jacqueline, so I had to slap him.”

She hears the smile in Roy’s voice. “You’re as strict as ever, Elizabeth.”

“She’s having some trouble with the customer. It looks like an argument.” As much as Riza knows she’s needed here at this vantage point, her instincts scream at her, telling her she should be closer to Falman and Havoc; close enough to shove them out of the way of an attack if need be. 

And then her instincts scream something different at her entirely. Riza knows, without turning around, that she isn’t alone in her hideout any longer. She takes a deep breath, preparing herself to act. “I’ll have to call you back,” she says. “One of my regulars is here.”

She whirls around, takes aim, and fires in a single, smooth movement. Her gunshot takes the intruder in the head, dead between the eyes. It’s a shot that should fell anybody, even a man as enormous as this one. 

Blood runs from the wound, but the man doesn’t fall. He keeps advancing on her, and he grins, a terrible, inhuman grin, as the blood drips into his open, smiling mouth. Faintly, Riza hears Roy on the line, calling out to her. 

If Riza had been an onlooker, the fear would have started to set in then. But she’s had nine years of military experience, and she doesn’t feel fear in the field. Just anger, and confusion - why doesn’t he fall? Why doesn’t he die, even as she empties her clip into him, hitting him in the head and at center mass? He remains unfazed, even as his skin and the floor grow slick with the blood he has shed. Red sparks dance along his skin, healing the bullet wounds. 

He advances on her until he looms over her, rendering her small and helpless. Then there’s the dawning horror, the cold realization,  _ useless, useless,  _ her gun is  _ useless  _ against him, her skills are  _ useless.  _

He wraps his massive hands around her, crushing the air out of her, lifting her off the ground as if she’s nothing more than a rag doll. Riza chokes as he tightens his grip on her neck, struggling against him, pushing against his arms, to no avail.  As hard as she tries to maintain her hold on her rifle, the pressure is too much. She can’t breathe, and blackness creeps into her vision. She hears her gun clatter to the ground. She feels naked without it, and vulnerable, and petrified with terror like she’s never been before.

“Are you all done now?” the thing asks. He has a strangely childish voice that contradicts his inhuman size and strength. “Then it’s time to eat you!”

He opens his mouth, his massive, massive mouth. Riza can smell his breath and see the tattoo on his pink tongue. She writhes, horrified, powerless. With what little strength and presence of mind she has left, she can’t help but think of Roy. She hates herself for being so weak, for letting herself fall to this creature, for putting him through the grief of Hughes all over again. She’s let him down. She’s failed him. 

Riza barely registers the sound of a bark - a familiar bark - and a dizzying mix of relief and fear surges within her. Black Hayate charges into the room, leaping onto the monster’s back, and sinks his teeth into the back of his neck.

The thing cries out, and it flings her through the air. Riza slams against the wall so hard that she hears something  _ crack. _ The impact knocks the breath out of her, stunning her. It’s an effort to drag herself up, but then Fuery’s running in, tossing her a gun, and there’s no sweeter relief than a fully loaded gun in her hand. Riza positions herself at his side, infinitely grateful for the backup, and they fire at the creature together. He staggers back underneath the onslaught of bullets, getting closer and closer to the window. 

Her gun clicks, echoed by Fuery’s. Riza has time to trade a brief, panicked look with him as the red lightning sparks around the creature’s body again, healing it. 

“Bullets gone?” The hideous thing asks hopefully. “Goody, goody! I get to have dinner and dessert!”

_ No,  _ Riza wants to scream. This is even worse. She’s gotten Fuery killed too, with her incompetence. 

The jet of flame and electricity sears the room, arcing perfectly between her and Fuery. It hits the monster directly in the chest, blasting him out of the clock tower, through the window, his agonized scream echoing in the air. 

Riza whirls to see Roy leaning against the stone doorframe, breathing hard, eyes narrowed with focus. “I barely made it,” he says, all the breath leaving his body in a sigh. 

And the first thing that rises up within her, rearing its ugly head like a snake, isn’t relief. It’s  _ jealousy.  _ It’s envy so powerful that it nearly chokes her. As much as Riza hates and distrusts and fears alchemy (Roy’s alchemy above all others) his Flame Alchemy was the only effective weapon against the thing that must have been another homunculus, just like the Lust and Envy that Barry the Chopper had spoken of. Her own skills, carefully honed over years, had been utterly useless. 

There’s so much anger, blood-boiling fury, welling up inside her. Rage at herself (her stupid, useless self, for never being able to learn the alchemy that could have saved Fuery’s life and her own), and anger at Roy for coming up with this bold plan that had so nearly gone fatally wrong. For the first time in her life, Riza turns her repressed fury on someone else. 

“Colonel, why the hell did you leave your post?” she demands. “No matter what happened to us, you could have still kept your involvement in this a secret! Now you’ve outed yourself to the enemy! Are you a complete idiot?”

She’s vaguely aware of Fuery and Black Hayate gaping at her, mouths open. Roy narrows his eyes, but to her surprise, he looks more put out than truly angry. “Okay, okay, I get it,” he grouses. “I’m an idiot. Are you happy now?” 

“Hey!” Fuery calls out, his voice rising in alarm. “Our target is moving!” 

They turn to him in the same instant, argument forgotten. “Strike the camp and retreat,” Roy orders. “Don’t leave even a scrap behind here.” 

Riza points between Hayate and Fuery. “Hayate, don’t leave his side.” Black Hayate’s instinct is to follow her, but he reliably follows and takes commands from everyone else on the unit as well. 

She and Roy make their own retreat, hurrying down the dark stairwell. Riza’s heart is still hammering in her chest, adrenaline pulsing through her veins. Her throat aches with every breath, and she swallows down a cough. Every time she blinks, she sees the homunculus, covered in bullet wounds and blood, and refusing to die. She remembers the pressure of his hands on her throat. The way he had threatened to eat her, pulling her towards his mouth as it opened wider, jaws unhinging.

Riza shudders, glad for the cover of the darkness. She’s even grateful for Roy’s strong, steadying presence - though for his own continued safety, he shouldn’t be with them. He walks briskly just ahead of her, constantly checking their peripherals in case of another attack, shoulders tense. “Lieutenant!” he snaps out suddenly. 

In her heightened state of awareness, Riza flinches. “Yes, sir?”

Roy doesn’t turn back to face her. “I’m glad you’re alive.” 

“I’m sorry to have worried you, sir.”  _ I could have held my own if I had learned a different set of skills.  _ The thought creeps in before she can stop it. “Thanks for saving us back there.” 

“Tell me later,” Roy replies, his concentration unwavering. 

They rush to his car, illegally double-parked outside of the tower, and catch up to Falman and Havoc within a couple of minutes. They pick Havoc up, and to Riza’s surprise, Alphonse comes charging up to the car as well. Roy lets him in, and they resume pursuit of Barry the Chopper and his body, speeding through the city streets, weaving through traffic and running red lights. Alphonse breathlessly informs them about the homunculus Envy, as well as Greed. “Greed had half of his head blown off, and it was back to normal in no time,” he says. “Both of them have the ability to regenerate themselves.” 

Riza reloads her guns, her hands steady in spite of her slowly growing nerves. “That man back there… I hit him with shot after shot in vital areas, but it didn’t even faze him. He must be one of them too.” 

Riza mentally catalogues their list of known opponents. Lust, Envy, Greed, and this fourth homunculus. Their enemies are only growing in number, and they appear immune to all but the most extreme alchemical attacks. Terrible, inhuman creatures born out of alchemy (of course), and only able to be destroyed through alchemy. The back of her shirt is growing damp with sweat. This is quickly unraveling into a worst-case scenario out of her darkest contemplations. Roy is the only alchemist on their unit. She won’t be able to protect him, or anyone else on the unit, against these homunculi. 

They screech to a stop in front of an imposing building. “Laboratory number three.” Roy throws the car into park with a hand that shakes slightly. “This is a military-run alchemical research facility under the control of the Fuhrer himself. The evidence points all the way to the top.”

Everything goes even more awry, then. Heedless of Roy’s orders to pull back, Barry the Chopper rushes straight into the facility in pursuit of his body.  _ So the soul of the crazed mass murder couldn’t be trusted to follow orders,  _ Riza thinks dryly, as she follows Roy, Havoc, and Alphonse into the building, listening to Roy order the evacuation of the lab’s personnel.  _ Who would have thought?  _

They descend a flight of stairs into the bowels of the laboratory, heading into a dark tunnel system. Regardless of her best efforts to modulate it, Riza’s breath comes shallow and quick, her gaze darting from one end of the hall to another, her weapon held at the ready (for all the good it will do anyone). She half expects to see the massive figure from the tower come barreling toward them at any minute

“Which way did Barry go?” Roy asks, scanning the hallway. There’s no sign of the Chopper’s suit of armor, or of his foul, decaying body.

“Should we split up into two groups, sir?” It’s standard procedure for their unit, but Riza regrets the words as soon as they leave her mouth. Nothing else about tonight, nothing else about their investigation in Central, has been  _ standard procedure.  _

“All right,” Roy replies tersely. “But don’t stray too far. Report back if you see any sign of him. Havoc, you’re with me. Hawkeye, you stay with Alphonse.”

Roy and Havoc head off before Riza can say another word. She stares after them, her skin crawling with apprehension. She tells herself that Roy will be fine. That both of them will be fine. Havoc’s almost as good a shot as she is, and Roy is in good hands with him. (But something inside her is screaming,  _ don’t let him go,  _ and Riza quiets the inner voice. Now isn’t the time for her to act like a worried girlfriend.) 

“Come on, Alphonse,” Riza manages, turning her back on them. “Stay close.” 

Alphonse’s presence at her back is comforting, although, as the adult, she should be the one who comforts and protects him. “Lieutenant, I’m not getting in the way of the mission, am I?” he asks tentatively.

“Not at all,” Riza is quick to assure him. “Your alchemy is really coming in handy.” She turns back, placing a gentle hand on his arm. The metal is cool underneath her hand. “I’ll be counting on you if there’s something that we soldiers can’t handle.”

Alphonse nods fiercely. “Yes, Lieutenant!”

They proceed down the curving hallway, and Riza startles at the muffled sound of an explosion somewhere behind them. She’s distracted by the sight of a splatter of blood on the floor near her boot. She tracks the drops to the entrance of a cavernous room, Alphonse following close behind her. 

Riza’s attention is drawn to the double doors on the far wall; to the alchemical symbols engraved into the stone. The design is less intricate, but she is reminded at once of the tattoo that mars her back. No matter how old she grows or how far she goes, she can never escape alchemy or its terrible effects. 

Then the smell hits her, a truly nauseating odor, and she chokes, covering her mouth and nose with her hand. “What is that?”

“You sure took your time getting here, babe.” Riza turns sharply, her gaze fixing on Barry the Chopper. He stands on the other side of the room, cleaver in hand, his mangled body at his feet. “My body’s all rotten,” he observes, shoulders drooping in sorrow. “What a waste of meat. I guess a body can’t hold up with someone else’s soul being shoved inside of it.”

Alphonse stares at Barry’s remains. Before Riza can tell him to turn away, and figure out to do with Barry the Chopper now, she hears footsteps. High heels clicking on the hard floor. 

Riza spins on her heel, leveling her gun at the woman who has just entered the laboratory. She is beautiful, with long, dark hair and alabaster skin, and everything about her sets Riza on edge. 

Behind her, Barry chuckles. “I was wondering when you were going to show up, Lust.” 

“Number 66.” Lust grits her teeth, a tremor of rage passing over her flawless features. “I see. They’ve used you as bait, and I fell for it. But why did you help the Colonel?” 

_ She knows Roy.  _ Riza’s mouth goes dry. That isn’t a good sign. She spares a moment for gratitude that this homunculus had found her, Alphonse, and the Chopper, rather than Roy and Havoc. 

Barry brandishes his cleaver. “I’ve never wanted to live my life, such as it is, kissing up to you freaks and hiding in the shadows. The only way I can be free is if you’re all dead, and I want to be the one to chop you into pieces.” 

Lust stares back at him impassively, unmoved by the threat. “What am I going to do with you?” she sighs. “And you, armor boy, you just had to tag along, didn’t you? You’ve left me no choice. But killing two sacrifices in one night is quite a setback.” 

“Sacrifices?” Alphonse asks, mirroring Riza’s confusion. “ _ Two  _ of them?”

“That’s right.” Lust smirks. “You and another.” 

Fear begins to coil around her then, but before Riza can demand answers, Barry dashes at Lust. “That’s enough! The next words to come out of your pretty mouth will be your last!” 

It happens so fast that Riza almost doesn’t see it. Lust unsheathes massive claws, tearing Barry to shreds with a single swipe, shattering him into a hundred pieces. She watches dispassionately as he clatters to the floor. “I hate rude men,” she muses, before stepping over the remains of Barry’s armor. Making her way toward Riza and Alphonse. 

“Now, who wants to go first?” The question is as polite, as conversational, as if she was asking them for tea. But that unsettling, quietly menacing smile still curves her lips. “Armor boy, or maybe the Lieutenant?” Her eyes fix on Riza’s. “You seem like the loyal type. Very soon, I’ll send you to join your commanding officer.”

It takes a second for Riza to comprehend the words. Her body registers them before her mind does. Her hand trembles, and it’s suddenly difficult to draw breath. “Wait.” She doesn’t recognize her own voice. An awful cold seeps over her, creeping from her toes up. “You said  _ two _ sacrifices in one night. It can’t…It can’t…”

Her thoughts blur together. Alphonse is a talented alchemist. So is Roy. The earlier reference to the Colonel-- 

Lust’s smile widens. 

Riza shatters. It’s the moment when she had felt Mother stop breathing and go still all over again. She howls, like she had then, a scream of pure agony, the little girl inside her and the woman both sobbing, begging,  _ no, please, no, not this, anything but this.  _

She acts on instinct, lashing out in the only way she can, firing bullet after bullet into the woman, sending them tearing into her brain, her chest, her stomach, every inch of her she can see. ( _ Useless,  _ something inside Riza says. None of this will bring her Roy, her Colonel, back to her, and none of this will hurt Lust. She couldn’t protect Roy, and she can’t even avenge him.) 

Riza empties every bullet in her guns, both of them, and it doesn’t do anything more than slow Lust’s inexorable advance. “Are you finished?” Lust’s high heels keep clicking on the ground. She sounds bored.

Riza can barely breathe. Her cheeks are wet with tears, and she remembers the last time she cried, back in East City after Nina Tucker, when Roy had wiped her tears away with his thumbs, and there’s an agonized whimper trapped in her chest because Roy will never do that again. Roy will never hold her again, or do anything ever again. All that he was, all that he is, all that he would have been, has been torn away. It’s like she’s strapped down to a table and someone is carving her heart out of her chest. Riza doesn’t realize she’s crumbling until her knees hit the ground. 

“You humans are such sad, weak, foolish creatures.” Lust comes to a stop in front of her, inspecting her claws. It is clear what she is preparing to do, and Riza has no interest in stopping her. 

Then Alphonse moves in front of her, shielding her with his body. “Get up, Lieutenant,” he tells her. “You have to get out of here.” 

“Foolish boy,” Lust purrs. “Do you want to die first?” 

Alphonse’s only response is to clap, summoning an iron spear, and he strikes out at Lust with it. “Run!” he repeats, more distressed than Riza has ever heard him sound. 

She can’t leave. She can’t imagine walking out of here, and leaving her Colonel, her Roy, to be carried out in a body bag.

“Leave me, Alphonse!” Riza orders, trying to imbue her tone with the same effortless command that Roy always had. “Save yourself!” 

“No!” Alphonse yells back. “I won’t! I won’t let another person I care about be killed! Not if there’s something I can do to protect them!” 

“Well spoken.” 

She would recognize that voice anywhere. 

Riza turns. She sees him for just an instant before an explosion of flame rocks the room, her ears ringing from the roar of it, her cheeks growing hot, even at this distance, even with the stone wall that Alphonse throws up to shield them. The flames clear, and Lust stares at Roy, aghast, incandescent with fury. “How are you still alive?”

All Riza can take in is the blood. The sheer amount of dark blood that stains Roy’s uniform coat. The fact that he’s still standing is impossible. She drags herself to her feet. “Colonel--”

Alphonse grabs her by the shoulder, holding her out of the way, keeping her from moving to stand between him and the homunculus. “No, Lieutenant!”

Roy strikes again and again, turning the vast room into an oven, filling it with the acrid scent of smoke. Lust may not be human, but she sounds just like one when she screams, and it’s like Ishval all over again, hearing the screams and seeing the flames. Her tormented cries, weakening into hoarse gasps, are haunting enough that the loathing, the desire for revenge, the desire to see Lust dead, that had filled Riza a few minutes ago ebbs away. She watches, transfixed, as the homunculus withers into ash.

Roy’s knees give out from underneath him, and he falls to the ground with a sickening  _ thud,  _ landing hard on his side. Riza dashes to him, lifting him up as best as she can. Roy’s arm is limp around her shoulders, and his eyelids flutter weakly. She’s never seen him in a state like this. “Are you all right, Colonel?” Her voice cracks. 

“Oh, Lieutenant.” Roy’s breath comes in shallow, irregular gasps, and Riza eases him down onto his back. “You’re safe.”

“Forget about me. We need to get you some help.” Riza can barely see through the tears in her eyes. He has lost so much blood. In Ishval, she had seen people succumb to lesser wounds. If he had survived Lust’s initial attack, just to die now--

Despite everything, Roy looks at Alphonse and smiles softly. “Thank you for looking after my subordinate.” 

“We need to call you a doctor,” Alphonse replies, clearly distressed. 

“For Havoc,” Roy whispers, his eyes drifting shut again, and Riza goes numb with dread. Havoc would have never let Roy come to assist her and Alphonse alone, unless…

“Right!” Alphonse gets up and sprints out of the room, making a sharp right into the darkened hallway. 

“Havoc?” Riza asks, and the tears spill out, hot on her face. 

“He’ll survive. He has to.” Roy reaches up, the movement halting, awkward, and brushes his knuckles against her cheeks, trying to swipe away the tears. “Don’t cry.”

Riza takes a deep breath and nods, biting the inside of her cheek to keep the tears at bay, trying her best to follow the order. 

Roy murmurs something barely audible, something that Riza doesn’t understand, before his arm falls to his side, his eyes drifting shut. Only then does Riza let the tiny, choked sob escape. She wipes her eyes hard, and before she can think better of it, she cups her Colonel’s face in both of her hands, leans down, and presses a kiss to his brow. 

Roy doesn’t move. Riza sits up straight, wiping her eyes again, settling her professional demeanor around her like armor, and waits for help to arrive. 

* * *

_ to be continued _

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You all remember who was watching Roy, Riza, and Alphonse from the shadows after Roy collapsed, right? :( 
> 
> We’re in the height of Brotherhood/manga canon now, and it’s a huge change for me to write compared to the earlier chapters. Because of that, I would love to hear what you thought of this chapter. I hope that the integration between manga/Brotherhood content and the fic was all right. 
> 
> As hard as it was to write about the fissures and the strain in Riza and Roy’s relationship, I also found it interesting to try to capture the contrast between the Roy we know now to the softer Roy that we knew in East City (and that Riza fell in love with). That tunnel scene during the Promised Day arc didn’t happen in isolation; I think that there were many moments and changes that Riza saw in Roy that led up to Riza’s decision there, and I wanted to start foreshadowing that early. 
> 
> Additionally, as much as I’ve loved writing Riza during this fic, I’ve also really enjoyed writing Roy. It’s interesting to write him like this. He’s dedicated to getting justice for the Ishvalans, and to reforming the government. He loves his friends and subordinates, and Riza (even though she doesn’t know it and he doesn’t explicitly tell her). He can also be a major jerk sometimes!! We've seen bits of this in earlier chapters in how Roy treats Ed when they first meet, and how Roy reacts to Nina ("Get that thing out of the way," he tells Riza, and she thinks that "Nina isn't a thing.) The “Have faith in me / I’ve had faith in you since the day we’ve met / Then act like it” exchange between Roy and Riza in this chapter made me legit angry to write, but I felt like it was true to this Roy as he is now. I’m always interested in exploring the differences in Roy and Riza’s personalities that we see in canon, with Riza seeming more cautious and restrained than Roy. 
> 
> As always, thank you so much for reading - and to all of you who left kudos and comments on the previous chapter, I really appreciate it. Comments are always treasured; please let me know what you think!


	9. nine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Important note: Excerpts of the dialogue in this chapter are taken from the manga and Brotherhood; they are not original content.

Help takes an agonizingly long time to arrive. Riza waits by her Colonel’s side, a terrible heaviness in her chest. She is unable to stop thinking of Havoc, lying somewhere else in this labyrinthine complex of tunnels, in god knows what condition.

Every fiber of her demands that she go to find her fallen comrade, to check on him, to try and apply what basic field medicine she can. But she can’t leave Roy alone here. Lust may be dead, but the other homunculi are still at large. They could even be  _ here,  _ lurking within these darkened tunnels and passageways, waiting to strike the second that she leaves Roy alone.

So Riza stays. She clutches Roy’s hand in her own, watching the faint rise and fall of his chest. She tries not to think of whether Havoc is still breathing. (Roy has her by his side. Havoc is lying in the dark, alone.) 

For the first time in a very long time, Riza prays. 

-

Finally, finally, two paramedics rush in. Riza sits up straight as they approach, releasing Roy’s hand. “Colonel Roy Mustang, twenty-nine years of age, blood type A positive,” she recites, forestalling their inquiry. “He’s breathing with a pulse rate of fifty-five beats per minute. He lost consciousness approximately fifteen minutes ago. He was stabbed in his right side and he’s lost a great deal of blood. Colonel Mustang was able to stand, move, and speak normally until his collapse. There’s another soldier who urgently needs your attention, and he’s in a room somewhere on the other side of this hallway.”

“The caller mentioned. We’ve sent the other half of our team out to search for him,” the paramedic replies tersely. Both paramedics crouch to examine Roy. “Who are you in relation to these soldiers?”

Riza remembers that she isn’t wearing her uniform; the telltale blue wool coat with the stars and bars on her epaulettes. “They’re my colleagues.” Her voice is thin and strained.  _ Colleagues.  _ The word sounds shallow. Hollow.  _ Family  _ would be the more appropriate term for who they are to her. She gestures to Roy, and her hand trembles. “My name is Riza Hawkeye. I’m the First Lieutenant on Colonel Mustang’s unit. The Colonel’s medical documentation should indicate that I’m his next of kin.”

“All right.” The paramedics unfold a stretcher, and carefully transfer Roy onto it. “You can come with us.”

Roy doesn’t stir at all during the transfer. His head lolls to the side, limp, like a rag doll. Riza has never seen him look so fragile, so powerless. It makes her want to cry.

“Can I help you carry him?” Riza asks, desperate to do something, anything, to assist him. 

The older paramedic shakes his head. “We’ve got him. Come on.”

They stride down the hallway, moving as fast as they can without jostling Roy. It hurts to look at him. He’d hate to be carried like this, if he were conscious.  _ Better a stretcher than a body bag,  _ Riza reminds herself, her fingernails biting into her palms.  _ There’s still hope.  _ She clings tight to the mantra, repeating it with each breath. 

“I don’t get it,” the younger paramedic mutters. “His shirt and jacket are soaked - he’s clearly lost a lot of blood, but there’s no visible stab wound.”

“He cauterized it with his flame alchemy.” Riza’s lips are numb. It’s difficult to speak. She can’t imagine the pain. She has felt Roy’s flames, and that had been torture in itself. To sustain a cauterizing burn on top of a deep stab wound, and then drag himself to his feet, through the tunnels, and over to her and Alphonse…

The paramedic shakes his head. “Fucking alchemists,” he murmurs in disbelief. “Unbelievable.”

They round a corner in the hallway, and Riza’s heart leaps when she sees another two paramedics coming to join them. They carry a stretcher - a  _ stretcher,  _ not a body bag. “This one is critical!” one of them calls out. “We need to get them both into the OR, stat. I’ve already radioed ahead and told them to prep the theaters.” 

_ Critical.  _ Riza knows what that means, and fear surges in her like a tidal wave.  _ No,  _ she pleads, and her head spins. It’s like she’s standing at Hughes’ funeral again, watching as they lowered his coffin into the grave. She can’t do that again. Roy can’t do that again.  _ None  _ of them can stand uselessly to the side at another military funeral as another young man, another  _ friend, _ is buried decades before his time. 

Riza clamps her teeth against the scream building inside her as she watches the paramedics load Roy and Havoc into the back of the ambulance. One of them helps her climb in, and settles her on a tiny, narrow bench. The paramedic throws a blanket over her, and it’s only then that she realizes that she’s shivering as though she’s wracked with cold. 

“Did you sustain any injuries, Lieutenant?” he asks her, shining a flashlight into her eyes. 

Riza blinks, turning away from the light. “I didn’t.” It’s disgusting, it’s unreal, how  _ she  _ had walked out of this situation, while Roy and Havoc had nearly lost their lives. She’s the bodyguard. She’s supposed to have protected them. This is all wrong. 

The paramedic follows her gaze to Roy and Havoc. “The surgeons at Central General are the finest in the country.” There’s sympathy in his voice. “They’ll do their best for your colleagues.”

Riza presses her hands between her knees. Her mind races almost as fast as the ambulance speeds through the streets of Central, alternating thoughts of  _ this is my fault  _ and  _ please don’t take them, please, God, don’t take Roy or Havoc, I’ll do anything, if you just spare them.  _

The ambulance screeches to a stop in front of Central General Hospital, and there is already a team of doctors and nurses waiting at the door. They take Roy and Havoc, whisking them inside the hospital and down a hallway without a word to her, barking orders to one another about pre-surgical prep. Riza instinctively moves to follow them, and a man in a white coat holds out an arm to stop her. “No, miss, I’ll show you where you can wait.” 

Riza’s hands itch to bury themselves in the lapels of his coat and throw him into the opposite wall. The harsh fluorescent lights of the hospital hurt her eyes. “I’m their Lieutenant and bodyguard,” she forces out, willing herself to stay calm. The last thing she needs is to get kicked out of the hospital for a show of temper. “I need to watch over them.”

The young doctor remains implacable. “I understand, but no one outside of the medical team is allowed in the operating theater.” 

Riza almost screams with frustration. “They’re in danger. Both of them were attacked tonight by criminals that our unit has been pursuing. I need to make sure they stay safe.”

“They will be safe,” the doctor says patiently. “It’s a hospital. Just like we’re not allowing you into the operating theater, we’re not going to let anyone else in either. No one is going to be able to get to them.”

He’s so infuriating, so arrogant, in his assumptions of safety and security. Riza wants to grab him and describe, in great detail, just what the enormous monster who attacked her in the tower had been like. His size, his inhuman strength, his voracious hunger, his gaping maw. His threats to  _ eat  _ her and Fuery. She wants to point out that no team of doctors and nurses, no team of hospital security personnel, will be able to stop Gluttony from forcing his way into the operating room. 

But she knows, with cold, helpless certainty, that the doctor will not listen to her. Riza takes a breath, and a moment to assess the situation. She has no choice but to comply with the doctor’s request. Her skin crawls at the thought. The homunculi have ties to the military. They could have ties to this hospital as well. They could be anywhere. There is no safe place. 

“Come with me,” the doctor persuades. “I’ll take you to the recovery room to wait. They’ll be brought in as soon as they’re out of surgery.”

Riza looks him over, searching for a tattoo. For that red tattoo that had been on Gluttony’s tongue and on Lust’s chest. Enough of the doctor’s skin is covered by his scrubs and white coat that her basic visual search is practically useless. Finally, she nods. 

Riza follows him to the recovery room, conscious of the single bullet remaining in her gun. It won’t be any use against him if he is one of the homunculi (Wrath, Pride, Envy, Sloth?). It will be effective against a human ally of the homunculi, though - just like the military researchers who worked at Laboratory Five to create the Philosopher’s Stone. 

But the doctor doesn’t make a move to threaten her. He just shows her into a room that is cold and sterile. “Your colleagues will be transferred here as soon as they’re out of surgery, which could take some hours. The surgeons will be in to speak with you then, to provide an update on their status. Go to the nurses’ station at the end of the hall if you have any questions. They can point you to the cafeteria if you need something to eat or drink.” 

The doctor’s pager goes off, and he leaves her alone. Riza paces in a tight circle before assessing the room’s security; its potential ingress and egress points. Aside from the doorway, there’s a decent-sized window, large enough to accommodate a man or woman. They are on the fifth floor. It’s too high up for a safe fall, but at least she has her basic rappelling gear tucked away in her pocket, in case of an emergency. 

Security assessments normally alleviate her nerves. Not tonight. The panic continues to creep closer, steadily, inexorably. Riza searches the room for a focus object, and her eyes light on the bland floral painting on the far wall. She stares at it, and makes herself count to ten in Drachman, in an attempt to hold the panic at bay. 

It’s enough. Barely. Riza longs for Black Hayate. For his steady, grounding presence at her side. The comforting rhythm of his breathing and the expression of understanding in his warm brown eyes. 

The door opens, and Riza whirls, hoping to see a doctor or a nurse who has come in to bear good news. Even though the more rational part of her knows that it’s only been a few minutes; that the surgeons are probably just now beginning their work on Roy and Havoc. Instead, it’s Fuery who bursts inside, his face pale, looking as small and scared as she feels. “Lieutenant Hawkeye! Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” The words taste bitter in her mouth. Riza looks him over, searching for any sign of injury. Thankfully, Fuery is unhurt, though shaken. “Did you run into any trouble after the Colonel and I left you?”

Fuery shakes his head. “I struck the camp as the Colonel ordered, and Hayate and I followed Barry’s scent to the Third Laboratory.” He swallows, still out of breath. “We just missed you, I think. I asked the lab personnel what happened, and they told me that two soldiers had been taken away in an ambulance. I dropped Hayate off at your apartment and headed straight over here. The front desk staff told me that the Colonel and Havoc had just been admitted for surgery, and they said I should wait over here with you.”

There’s a sheen of sweat on his face. Fuery must have run the entire way, from the tower, to the Third Laboratory, to her apartment, and then to the hospital. Roy and Havoc used to tease him, saying he was surprisingly fast for such a short kid.  _ We should watch out, Colonel,  _ Havoc would smirk, while Roy clapped Fuery on the back.  _ He’s going to try and beat our mile time records at the next quarterly physical.  _

Riza nearly chokes at the memory. She’s about to speak, to start to explain, when the door slams open again and Falman enters. His typical composure is nowhere to be seen. “I heard the incident at the Third Laboratory called in on the scanner when I was leaving the Military Police headquarters after questioning,” he says, by way of explanation. “I came straight here.”

At least Falman and Fuery are here with her. At least they’re all right. Riza looks at the two of them, drawing strength from their presence. “We chased the Chopper to the Third Laboratory,” she explains. “The Colonel ordered him to pull back, but he didn’t. He continued inside, in pursuit of his body. We followed him to an underground complex beneath the lab, and we split up there. The Colonel and Havoc went one way, and Alphonse and I went the other.”

And Riza curses herself, for the dozenth time, for allowing that. For suggesting that they split up in the first place. She and Alphonse should have stayed with Roy and Havoc. They would have been stronger and safer together. There’s no blame in Falman and Fuery’s expressions, though, just concern and rapt attention. 

Riza lowers her voice, and they all draw close together, standing in a huddle in the center of the room. “Alphonse and I found Barry. The homunculus, Lust, found Roy and Havoc. She… She attacked them, before reaching Alphonse, Barry, and I. She destroyed Barry’s suit of armor. She was about to finish off Alphonse and I when the Colonel saved us. Alphonse went to call for help for Havoc and the Colonel. Fuery, did you see Alphonse when you got to the lab?”

“No.” Fuery wipes his forehead with the back of his wrist. “He must have gone back to his hotel.”

She’ll have to make a call to check on him. “I’m sorry,” Riza whispers. Despite her best efforts, her voice breaks. “I allowed the Colonel and Havoc to be critically injured. They were under my watch. This never should have happened.”

“This wasn’t your fault, Lieutenant!” Fuery pats her on the arm, and Riza wraps her arms around herself, trying not to weep. She’s all too conscious of the fact that their unit has lost a full half of its strength, with Breda and Edward at the Xerxian ruins, taking care of the Maria Ross situation, and with Roy and Havoc hospitalized. Their commanding officer, and their officer-in-charge whenever Roy is away. Their unit has never weathered a storm like this before. Until now, the most serious injury that has happened to any of them on a mission was Breda’s broken arm and collarbone some years ago. Riza suddenly misses him - steady, unflappable Breda, always cool-headed in a crisis. They would benefit from his presence.

Falman looks at her and Fuery in turn, his features set in grim, determined lines. “Fuery is right. Hawkeye, you are not at fault. We must be strong enough to support one another until Breda returns, and the Colonel and Havoc are back on their feet.” 

He rests one hand on her shoulder, and one on Fuery’s. The gesture is somewhat awkward - Falman has never been the demonstrative sort - but it is genuine, and warm. Riza and Fuery lean against him in the same moment, and Falman wraps his arms around their shoulders. The situation has never been more dire, but for the first time since moving to Central (for the first time since they had learned of Hughes’ murder), Riza knows the momentary sensation of safety. Security. 

She lets out a shaky exhale, and they finally break apart. “Have you eaten anything since you left the office this morning?” Falman asks her. 

Riza presses a hand to her stomach. It feels like an eternity has passed since she left the office this morning. Since her phone calls with Roy. She hadn’t had lunch, let alone dinner. A glance at the clock on the wall confirms that it’s been more than sixteen hours since she had her breakfast. Her insides are hollow with hunger, but the thought of eating is impossible. “I haven’t. But I’m fine.”

“You have to,” Falman says firmly. “Fuery and I will not be able to get by on our own if you end up out of commission too.” 

“I don’t know when the Colonel and Havoc will be back.” Riza looks at the clock again, wishing she had thought to check the time upon arriving. She can’t have waited for more than thirty minutes. It feels like twice that. “I have to be here when they’re transported in. It’s bad enough that I’m not there for them right now. Our enemies have ties to the military. They could have infiltrated this place as well.” 

“I’ll bring you back something, then,” Fuery offers. “I’ll get something for both of us too.”

He dashes off before she can reply, leaving her and Falman standing alone in the room. Falman regards her with compassion. “I am sorry for what you went through, Lieutenant.”

Riza loves her entire unit in their own way, but it had been Falman she had bonded with first, when she joined the unit. (Besides Roy, of course.) The two of them had sparked up a friendship over discussions of mystery novels, and the long-running true crime radio show that they both listened to every Thursday night and discussed on Friday morning at work. They had gone to their favorite authors’ book signings and their question and answer sessions at Uptown Books.

It is Falman alone who has never made a single teasing comment about her and Roy, when Roy has been safely out of earshot. He has never asked her about Roy when the two of them have been walking home from the bookstore or the library, or when they have gone out to lunch. But the way he looks at her now - Riza feels seen. Understood. This would have made her feel exposed, under normal circumstances. It would have made her alarmed, self-conscious, because only Rebecca knows the truth of what she feels for Roy. 

But these aren’t normal circumstances. 

Back in the Third Laboratory - she hadn’t just thought she had lost her commanding officer. For a few terrifying minutes, Riza thought the man she loved had been ripped away from her. It had been among the most frightening times of her life. It might be over now, but the trauma still lingers. The memory of that intense, shocking, acute fear and pain. The memory of thinking, for a split second, about the single bullet left in her gun - and that impulse warring with the knowledge that  _ no, Roy would never want me to-- _

Riza nods, mute. 

The two of them settle into the uncomfortable chairs placed against the wall. Fuery returns with croissant sandwiches for all three of them, coffee for him and Falman, and a cup of tea for her. Riza eats her sandwich mechanically. The food tastes like ash in her mouth, but the tea is a comfort. Falman and Fuery sit on either side of her, and they finish their meals and drinks in silence. “Maybe you should sleep while you can,” Fuery suggests to her, a little timidly. “I don’t think you’ll get any rest when the Colonel and Havoc get back.”

Riza wants to turn down the idea. Now isn’t the time to indulge in rest. But her eyes are heavy and swollen from exhaustion and strain and her earlier tears, and her muscles ache with fatigue. Besides, she knows he’s right. She won’t feel comfortable leaving Roy and Havoc when they return. “All right.” She rubs her eyes. “Please wake me the second they get back.”

Riza rests her head against the wall and closes her eyes. The first thing she sees when her eyes drift shut is Lust’s cold, cruel smile.

-

Eventually, Riza falls into a fitful, uneasy sleep. She jolts awake as soon as she detects motion, straightening up from where her head had fallen against Falman’s shoulder. The three of them rise at once, pressing themselves against the wall, as a transport team rolls Havoc into the room, and then Roy. The heart rate monitors at their sides beep steadily. Both of them appear to be in peaceful slumber, and Riza’s knees almost give out from sheer relief.

“Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye?” A man in a white coat enters, and he holds his hand out to her. Riza remembers to shake it, belatedly. “I’m Doctor Colin Sielach. I understand you’re Colonel Mustang’s next of kin?”

“I am.” Riza ignores Falman and Fuery’s surprise. “Eva Havoc, Jean Havoc’s mother, is his next of kin. She lives quite far out East and it would take her several hours to get here. Second Lieutenant Vato Falman, Master Sergeant Kain Fuery, and I work closely with Jean, and Eva knows us well. We’re eager for an update on Jean and Colonel Mustang’s status.”

“It’s lucky that both of them got here when they did.” Sielach folds his arms. “Even another few minutes and it might have been too late. They both lost a great deal of blood. Colonel Mustang suffered some internal damage and bleeding, as did Jean. Jean experienced some spinal trauma as well, but there’s no way for us to tell the extent of the damage yet.”

Riza, Falman, and Fuery exchange uneasy looks. “How are they now?” Riza presses. 

“They’re in stable condition. They’ll wake in the morning, after the anesthesia and sedatives wear off.” Sielach checks his chart. “They’ll be given medication to manage their pain, but it’s nothing so heavy that they won’t be alert and responsive.”

“Thank you, Doctor.” The relief that courses through Riza is so powerful, so all-encompassing, that it takes her breath away for an instant. 

“Of course. It’s an honor to help soldiers wounded in the line of duty.” Sielach smiles. “They’re lucky to have such devoted colleagues. The three of you can go and get some rest now, though. Our team will be checking in throughout the night to keep an eye on them. We have your phone number, Lieutenant Hawkeye, if we need to get in touch.”

“I’ll stay, thank you,” Riza says evenly.

The doctor leaves, as do the nurses, once their final checks of Roy and Havoc’s vitals are complete. The door closes behind them, and the unit breathes a collective sigh, their shoulders slumping with the release of tension. 

Falman runs a hand through his hair. “I will attempt to get in touch with Breda and ask him to return at once. Is there anybody else I should contact?”

“I’ll try calling Alphonse at his hotel to make sure he got back safe,” Fuery chimes in. 

Riza smiles at both of them. “Thank you. I’ll stay right here with the Colonel and Havoc.”

They seem reluctant to leave her alone for the rest of the night, but Riza assures them that she will be fine. All she needs is a refill of ammo, a backup weapon, her uniform coat, and a map of Central City, along with a marker. Fuery tells her he’ll bring the things immediately. 

They depart, and Riza checks the hallway. It’s empty, save for the nurses at the station down the hall. She’ll have to learn their names, memorize their faces, and ask Falman to secure background checks for all of them. At the very least, they need to learn if any of the nurses are new to this ward. 

Riza closes the door and brushes her fingers against her holstered gun, just to soothe herself. One bullet. Fuery can’t return soon enough. 

She makes her way to Roy’s side. His features are more relaxed than she’s seen them in a long time. Even on the evening that he had fallen asleep in her apartment, he had been frowning in his sleep, his brow slightly furrowed. His skin is paler than usual, but with the amount of blood he had lost, Riza supposes that is to be expected. 

It’s an inappropriate impulse. It is taking advantage of his unconscious, vulnerable state. Still, Riza loses her battle with temptation. She places her hand on Roy’s, gently, for just a moment, tracing her fingertips against the back of his hand, his fingers, his wrist. Just one moment. It is an indescribable comfort.

She withdraws reluctantly, and takes one step back, and then two, to prevent herself from doing it again. Riza turns to Havoc, studying his features. He appears just as peaceful as Roy. She glances skyward.  _ Thank you,  _ she thinks. She had so many prayers go unheard as a child, and as a young woman, and in Ishval. But this one had been answered. 

Roy and Havoc survived their ordeal. The rest is up to her now. She failed them once, and Riza silently vows to never fail them again. 

She sinks back into her chair and resumes her watch.

-

Roy and Havoc both remain motionless for the better part of the next ten hours, to the point where Riza develops the habit of checking their heart rate monitor once a minute. “Is this typical?” she asks the nurse in an undertone, just past ten-hundred hours the following morning. 

The nurse nods. “Completely. It could be a few hours yet before they wake up. Don’t worry.”

Riza settles back down, not quite satisfied. She’s accustomed to being patient. It normally comes easier to her. She has chided every member of her unit, barring Falman, for their lack of patience. Over the past night, she has learned that it is infinitely more difficult to practice patience when the health of her loved ones is at risk. 

Riza goes to stand by the window, looking down at the streets below. Automatically, she returns to the thoughts that have plagued her for most of the night - the whereabouts of the other homunculi. Edward and Alphonse encountered Greed and Envy. Lust has been eliminated. Gluttony’s status is unknown. Pride, Wrath, and Sloth have not yet revealed themselves.

“Hawkeye?”

Riza turns swiftly. Roy is sitting up in bed, blinking around the room in confusion. His voice had been little more than a rasp. She crosses over to him in a few quick strides, suppressing the wholly unprofessional impulse to smooth her fingers through his disheveled hair and cup his face in her hand. “Colonel, you’re up. How are you feeling?”

Roy’s hand goes to his ribs, and he stares down at his hand as if surprised that it isn’t coated with blood. “Lab three,” he croaks. She’ll have to get him some water. “Havoc.”

“Havoc is fine.” Riza moves aside, gesturing to Havoc, on the other side of the room. “He went through surgery when you did. He’s still asleep.” 

Roy rubs his forehead, still dazed. “I killed it. I killed Lust.”

He looks at her for verification, and Riza inclines her head. “You did,” she says softly. “You saved Alphonse and I. Thank you.” 

“When I came in, you…” Roy trails off and shakes his head, as if trying to make sense of something. “I saw you…” 

Riza flinches away from the memory of how utterly she had broken down, forcing Alphonse to step in to protect her. Shame pricks at her like a thousand needles. She was the adult; she should have kept it together and provided cover for Alphonse’s escape, no matter what. “Lust told Alphonse and I that she killed you.” She tries to keep her tone detached. “I lost my composure.”

A muscle twitches in the side of Roy’s jaw. It’s a telltale sign of an impending outburst of temper - usually directed at Edward, Havoc, or both. (His anger had never been directed at her. Riza still disapproved.)

Roy glares at her with such fury that Riza takes a step back, shaken. “That was idiotic,” he snaps. “You believed those lies from the enemy? Even if they had been telling the truth, how could you lose the will to fight like that? I expected more out of you, Lieutenant!”

Riza had expected that it would be bad, but she hadn’t imagined it would be this bad. The censure in his sharp words nearly cracks her composure. She closes her eyes, feeling like an ashamed little girl. This is worse than her usual hatred of being chastised. She hadn’t  _ just  _ disappointed. She hadn’t  _ just _ been inadequate. She had disappointed  _ Roy.  _

“I’m very sorry,” she manages, because that’s all she can do. She can just apologize, and hope that she hasn’t let him down so contemptibly that he has lost all respect for her. 

“You need to learn how to keep it together under pressure,” Roy orders, through gritted teeth. “You can’t just shut down like that, no matter what the circumstances are. As a soldier, and as my subordinate, you need to firm up your resolve.”

The words hit Riza like a slap. Her first instinct is to bristle at his unfairness. She has maintained her professionalism under pressure during countless missions with the unit over the years, and throughout the Scar investigation. 

_ But that’s not the entire truth, isn’t it,  _ a dark voice whispers to her.  _ He’s right.  _ And Riza remembers every time she  _ hasn’t  _ kept it together. Every time she hasn’t been strong. She had cracked in Ishval, seeking comfort in Reid, and again after returning, with Bresler. She had broken down on the night Roy burned her back. She had behaved similarly on the Nina Tucker case, and then again with this incident. 

It makes Riza’s stomach turn to think that after Nina, and after this episode, Roy probably thinks of her as nothing more than the weak little girl she had been, once. The sixteen-year-old who had collapsed in a sobbing heap after Father’s death, forcing him to comfort her. 

After all this time, all these years, she had thought she had grown past that. Grown into a stronger person, someone stoic and brave. Last night had proved her wrong. She had utterly disgraced herself in the field as a soldier. 

Roy is right to reprimand her. That doesn’t make this any less devastating. She has never let him down before, in any way, large or small. She has always been his trusted right hand. His first and best Lieutenant. She never wants to disappoint him again. She  _ can’t  _ disappoint him again. No matter what, she has to prove to him that she is still good. That she is still worthy of standing at his back (or at his side.)

Riza remains silent, searching for the right words to convey her commitment to doing better,  _ being  _ better, in the future. Roy finally leans back against the pillows, evidently exhausted by the outburst of temper. A flicker of pain crosses his face. “I’m going to continue to trust you with watching my back,” he tells her brusquely. “As long as you remember your orders.” 

“You’re one to talk, Colonel.” 

They both turn, startled by the sound of Havoc’s voice. The Second Lieutenant still reclines in bed, his eyes closed. “As our commanding officer, you shouldn’t even have been in the field yesterday.” 

“Shut up!” Roy barks. To Riza’s alarm, he tries to rise from the bed. The sudden movement pulls at his wound, and he presses a hand to his side with a gasp of pain.

“Please don’t yell, Colonel,” Havoc drawls, unfazed. “It’s hard on my injury.”

Despite everything, despite Roy’s harsh words to her, the tightness in Riza’s chest releases a little as Roy and Havoc snipe at each other, just like they used to back in East City. They haven’t had one of these verbal sparring matches in a long time. Not since Hughes was murdered, and the unit transferred to Central, and Roy’s typical levity became a thing of the past. 

Roy and Havoc both fling themselves back against their pillows, exchanging near-identical growls of frustration. “Why do I have to share a room with you, anyway?” Roy taunts. “I’m an officer. I should have my own private room, with a beautiful nurse.” 

Riza knows that the words had been chosen to irritate Havoc. Roy always makes it a point to out-flirt Havoc whenever the unit goes out, just to prove that he can; just to raise Havoc’s hackles. (It doesn’t mean anything. So it doesn’t bother her. Really.) Still, today, after everything, the comment smarts. “The enemy might try to kill you in your sleep,” Riza replies, a bit coolly. “It’s much easier to protect the two of you if you’re in the same room.”

“This is the perfect opportunity for them to finish us off.” Roy frowns. “People die in hospitals all the time, after all. They could easily make it look like an accident. So why haven’t they tried anything?” 

The door opens, preempting Riza’s reply. Fuery enters, saluting. “Sorry to disturb you, Colonel.”

“We wanted to visit,” a familiar voice pipes up. Alphonse joins them, lowering his head in order to avoid hitting the door frame as he walks in. 

“Alphonse!” Riza is normally always happy to see him, and she had meant to call him later today to apologize for what happened the previous night, but she’s alarmed to see him out and about so soon after the incident at the Third Laboratory. “Should you be walking around so openly? If they find you, they could try to--” 

“I’ll be okay,” Alphonse reassures her hastily. “I have someone with me who can detect the auras of the homunculi. They’ll warn me if I need to get out of here.” 

Riza exchanges a nonplussed glance with Roy. “What?” 

“Lieutenant, maybe you should rest a while.” Fuery gives her a once-over, his concern clear. “I’ll cover for you.”

Riza declines the offer, gently but firmly. “This is my duty. I’m fine. Do you have what I asked for?”

Fuery returns the rolled-up map of Central over to her. She had marked it last night, and he had done a foot patrol of the area this morning, checking for anything unusual. “Thank you, Fuery. Please don’t let anyone in.” 

Fuery goes to stand guard outside of the room, and Riza unrolls the map. 

“What is that?” Roy leans forward, trying to get a better look.

Riza smooths the map out on his bed, so that he can see it easier. She rests her finger on the Third Laboratory. “This is where we ended up last night. I calculated the distance we traveled from when we first entered the basement of the Third Laboratory, based on the number of steps I took, and the length of each step. From that, I could approximate the location of those large doors we found in the underground complex. The hallway was slightly curved, so the direction wasn’t easy to pinpoint. I used my measurement as the radius and drew a circle with the Third Laboratory at the center.”

Roy and Havoc blink in unison, astonished. “Nice work.”

Riza hears the genuineness in her Colonel’s compliment. The validation is sweet, soothing some of the sting of his earlier words. “Thank you, sir.”

Alphonse comes closer, careful not to crowd her. He and Roy examine the map, pointing out that the Second Laboratory, Central Command, and the Fuhrer’s estate all fall within the circle. Roy rubs his chin. “Maybe the Fuhrer is involved with the homunculi,” he muses.

Riza raises an eyebrow. She has disliked and distrusted Bradley ever since Ishval, but to suspect the Fuhrer of involvement with the homunculi seems like a considerable leap. Al shifts, seeming to share her discomfort at the thought. “But in Dubliss, the Fuhrer led the squad that destroyed the homunculi there.”

“Can we count him as an ally, though?” Roy stares past them, a faraway expression on his face. “Hughes said that the military was in danger. Which means that whoever we’re dealing with, they’re operating on a scale that could threaten the existence of this country.”

They all lapse into a thoughtful silence. Alphonse is the one to break it. “I have to go now, but please let me know if there’s anything I can do to help in your work. Lieutenant Hawkeye knows where to reach me.”

The statement had been directed at Roy, but Riza responds first. “We’re not going to bring you into this, Alphonse. Yesterday was bad enough. I’m very sorry for what happened.” 

“We’ll get in touch if we need you.” Roy’s words directly contract her own, and Riza tenses. It’s bad enough that Edward is embroiled in this business. They have no right to get Alphonse, a civilian, mired in it too. 

“Get well soon, Colonel, Lieutenant Havoc. Bye, Lieutenant Hawkeye.” Alphonse waves at them and exits, and Riza’s head begins to throb as she considers Roy’s earlier suggestion. The possibility of the Fuhrer’s direct involvement in this conspiracy is unsettling, to say the least. It would mean that the rot in this government sinks far deeper than any of them suspected. 

For the first time, she understands Roy’s eagerness to untangle this conspiracy as soon as possible. More than anything else, she longs for this to be over. For Roy to find justice for Hughes, and some peace. For all of their lives to not be in immediate danger any longer. 

It’s that impulse, that desire for all of this to be over, to be behind them, that sparks her thought. (And perhaps there is some desire to earn Roy’s approval again.) “If we could drag the enemy out into the open and finish them off…” Riza starts.

“I don’t know how far the high command’s involvement in this goes.” Roy crosses his arms, contemplating her idea. “If we do finish them off now, that could be my key to the top.”

Coming from anybody else, the words would sound like nothing more than cold, hard, selfish ambition. But Riza knows her Colonel’s motivations in seeking the highest seat of power in Amestris. There is nothing selfish about his reasons. 

A small, humorless smile curves Roy’s lips. “It’s strange to think about it, isn’t it? All I wanted for this operation was to find leads on who might be involved with these experiments. What we caught was a much bigger fish than I hoped for.”

Riza takes a deep breath, evaluating the safety and the wisdom of speaking up. For years, she hasn’t hesitated to disagree with her commanding officer when necessary; to voice her opinion honestly and without reservations. Roy’s reactions of late have sparked some wariness in her. And after earlier today - Riza shies away from admitting it, even in the privacy of her own mind, but she’s afraid of his disapproval, and of his anger. 

Perhaps it is irrational, but she can’t shake the sense of trepidation that comes with being on thin ice. One more misstep and Roy could cast her aside and replace her with someone better. Someone more suited for this type of work. Riza remembers their argument on the night she had captured Barry the Chopper. He could replace her with someone who has the blind faith in him that he wants. ( _ Someone who isn’t useless against the homunculi,  _ the dark voice that had spoken earlier whispers.  _ An alchemist, maybe, like Major Armstrong or Edward. He could replace you, just like Father did. _ ) 

Still. That first summer on the unit, back in East City, she had promised Roy that she would always give him her honesty. 

Riza keeps her voice as level as she can, revealing nothing of her inner conflict. “I think this fish is a bit too big for us right now.”

To her surprise and relief, Roy smiles. Riza lets out a breath she didn’t know she was holding. “It just means we have something to work toward. I’m going to ask all of you to keep investigating this.”

“Of course, sir,” Riza says immediately. Some of the throbbing in her head eases. ( _ Safe,  _ she thinks.) 

Havoc regards them with a strange expression on his face, something sad and wistful. “Yeah… You’ll have to count me out on this one, Colonel.”

The sentiment is jarring, coming from Havoc. Havoc, normally so bold and rash and reckless, always the first man to enter a fray and the last one to leave it.  _ I’m not the kind of guy who starts fights,  _ Havoc always boasted,  _ but I’m always the one who finishes them.  _ Riza’s surprise is reflected in Roy’s face. He stares at Havoc like he doesn’t recognize him. 

For his part, Havoc just gazes down at his own legs, as if unwilling, or unable, to look at the two of them. “I can’t feel my legs.” His voice is barely audible. “It’s not like… It’s not like they’re asleep, either, with that pins and needles numbness. I haven’t been able to feel them or move them since I woke up. I’m no use to anyone like this. I’m sorry, Colonel.”

It takes a few moments to register, and then the recollection comes, of the doctor’s words last night. The mention of spinal trauma. 

Riza struggles to contain her horror at the incomprehensible idea of Havoc being paralyzed. Havoc, so active and vital, with his glowing mile times during the unit’s quarterly physicals _ ,  _ holding the record for the fastest soldier at East City Command every quarter for the past six years straight.  _ What can I say?  _ Havoc would grin, ignoring Roy’s envious glowering.  _ Waking up to run every morning at six-hundred hours pays off.  _

Havoc, who loved to argue with Roy over weightlifting techniques, who scrambled up into trees without hesitation to rescue cats. Havoc, more than anyone else on the unit, is the consummate soldier. All the rest of them could have succeeded, could have thrived, even, outside of the military. Not Havoc. He had been born to be a soldier. To imagine him medically discharged - to imagine their unit without him… It’s impossible. 

Riza turns to Roy, a sinking sense of dread inside her. Her Colonel looks ashen. His lips move, and no sound comes out. Finally, he clears his throat. “You have nothing to apologize for, Havoc. I’m the one who should be apologizing to you. If I had protected you from that homunculus--” 

“Colonel…” Havoc closes his eyes. “All due respect, but please shut up.”

Roy doesn’t flare up at Havoc over his insubordination. He just fixes the wall in front of them with a blank, unseeing stare. 

He is blaming himself for what happened to Havoc. Riza knows it. It’s his nature. Roy can be abrasive to the unit at times, but the truth is, any of them could get a paper cut and he would blame himself for it, muttering to himself that he should have prevented it. And that had been  _ before  _ Hughes. This is his worst fear come to life. The permanent injury of a subordinate.

Abruptly, Riza remembers the promise Roy had made her, back in East City.  _ I will protect you, and everyone else. Nothing will happen to any of you, I swear it. None of you will end up like Hughes.  _

A transport team steps inside just then, telling them briskly that they’ve received an order for Jean Havoc to undergo a full panel of neurological tests. Havoc forces a smile at the two of them as the transport team wheels his bed out of the room. “See you later, Colonel, Hawkeye. And hey, don’t do anything in here that I wouldn’t do.” 

It’s a classic inappropriate Havoc joke. He’s made dozens of them over the years in East City. Riza has to bite the inside of her cheek hard to stop the tears from welling up in her eyes.  _ Stop it,  _ she commands herself. Now more than ever, with Hughes gone and another one of their unit taken out of commission, she has to be strong. For Roy. For everyone else. This is not the time for pain and tears and weakness. ( _ You’ve certainly shown enough of that already. _ ) She has to be strong. She has to be a soldier. There is no room for Riza the person anymore, just Riza the soldier. 

Riza takes one step toward Roy. “Colonel…”

Roy’s hands fist around the thin blanket laid over his lap. “Lieutenant.” The deceptive calm of his voice is betrayed by a tremble. “Do not tell me that this wasn’t my fault.”

Riza falls silent. 

She stares out of the window. Roy stares down at the blanket. They both breathe, inhale, exhale, the sound ragged, desperate, like two people drowning, trying to stay above water. 

Riza wants to go to him. She wants to wrap her arms around him and offer some words of comfort. But she can’t. He wouldn’t want her to, anyway. She just stands at the side of the room, feeling more useless than ever.

“He could have risen to the rank of General.” Roy has buried his head in his hands; his voice is muffled. “I’ve been talking with him about his career track for years. I told him I’d help him get there. He had the most potential and the most interest in that kind of advancement. He could have had a long, decorated tenure in the military. And I--” he chokes. “I ruined it. I’ve destroyed his career. His  _ life. _ ” 

Riza can’t bear it. Regardless of the consequences, she can’t remain quiet while Roy punishes himself like this. “Colonel, please don’t do this to yourself,” she implores. “We don’t know the full situation yet. Havoc could be a good candidate for automail, just like Edward, and that would allow him to continue as a soldier. And even if he isn’t,” -- she can’t bear the thought, but Riza makes herself plunge ahead -- “Even if he isn’t, you haven’t destroyed his life. This will alter his life, but Havoc will keep moving forward. I know it.” 

“How?” Roy snaps. “What will he do, if he isn’t eligible for automail, and if he can’t be a soldier? Go back East and work at his family’s store for the rest of his life? It’s everything he wanted to escape when he enlisted! I’ve set him back eleven years, and made all of his hard work a waste!” 

“I don’t know what he’ll do.” Riza’s nerves fray, and she struggles to keep her temper. “I don’t know yet. Maybe he’ll teach at the military academy. But Havoc’s life isn’t over, and you shouldn’t act like it is. And you can’t blame yourself for what happened to him. It will destroy you.”

_ More than you’ve already been destroyed. _

Roy exhales sharply, looking away from her. “It’s easy for you to say, Lieutenant. I didn’t just - I didn’t just fail to protect my subordinate. He’s my friend, and my failures have changed the course of his life forever. It’s a spinal injury, Hawkeye,” he presses. “As if not being able to walk or serve in the military isn’t bad enough - he might not be able to...to be intimate. To have children. How would you feel, if your actions had impacted Catalina in this way?” 

Riza flinches at the question, at the mere thought. Her hand goes to her mouth, holding back a soft sound of horror. 

“Exactly,” Roy says bitterly. “I can’t atone for this. Another one for the list.”

“Colonel,” Riza starts, and she hates herself for the way her voice breaks on the word. 

Roy won’t look at her. “Go take a break, Lieutenant. Fuery can watch over me from the outside. I need to be alone.”

Riza salutes, numb, and makes her way out of the room, blinking away her tears. Fuery is nowhere to be seen. She waits outside, piecing back the fragments of her composure, until he returns. He’s clutching a brown paper bag from Capriotti’s Sandwich Shop, which he hands to her. “I picked this up for you, Lieutenant. I forgot to mention earlier that I stopped by your apartment this morning to walk Black Hayate. I checked in at the office, too - Falman’s holding down the fort there.”

His kindness nearly breaks her. Riza places a hand on his shoulder. “Thank you, Fuery.”

Fuery peers up at her. “Is something wrong?” he ventures tentatively. 

It isn’t her secret to tell, and Riza weighs the ethics of sharing. “Havoc has been taken in for some neurological testing,” she says, not wanting to reveal too much. “The Colonel and I are worried. He...dismissed me, and asked that you stand guard for him out here.”

Fuery regards her with mingled worry and surprise.  _ Give me the room,  _ Roy has ordered the unit, countless times.  _ Not you, Hawkeye. You stay.  _ “The Colonel probably wants you to get some sleep. Don’t worry. I’ll look out for him, and for Havoc too.”

“I know you will.” Riza tries to smile. “Thank you, Master Sergeant. I’ll be back by sixteen-hundred hours to relieve you.”

She takes her lunch down to the hospital cafeteria and eats the turkey sandwich, side salad, and apple, barely tasting any of it, before heading outside. Riza blinks in the bright sunlight, momentarily disoriented by the crowds of people. She briefly considers calling a taxi, but the fresh air and exercise will do her good, and she walks the entire way to her apartment, her steps slower than usual. 

Riza fumbles with her key in the lock, the fatigue and strain beginning to take its toll on her. She enters, and Black Hayate yips, leaping out of his dog bed by the window and trotting over to her. 

She crumbles to her knees and wraps her arms around his neck, hugging him tight. Black Hayate presses his cold nose to her flushed cheeks, and the pressure inside her mounts. She just wants to cry, but she can’t allow it. Riza longs to call Rebecca, or Grandfather, just to hear their voices, but she and Grumman can’t communicate outside of coded letters because there are no phone lines secure enough to be trusted with their secret, and Rebecca is at work right now. 

Riza goes to the bathroom, pulls off her clothing, and turns the shower dial to the hottest it can go. She doesn’t normally shower in such heat, because it makes the scars on her back grow tight and sensitive. (But she deserves that today, after how she had conducted herself last night.) 

She stays in the shower for a long time, until her skin turns red, until her fingertips wrinkle, her forehead pressed to the damp tiles. Even the lavender scent of her shampoo and soap doesn’t soothe her.

Riza gets out of the shower, and wraps a towel around herself, and stares at herself in the mirror. She barely recognizes the exhausted shell of a woman staring back at her. 

The knowledge weighs on her, crushing and heavy. This is everything she had been afraid of, years ago in East City, when she had first started to feel things she shouldn’t for her commanding officer. She had worried it would impact her work. Her ability to serve him. Her ability to work toward their shared goals. 

Later, Riza had rationalized it. Her devotion, platonic and professional and romantic, tangled up into a mess - it did impact her work, and it did impact her ability to serve as her Colonel’s Lieutenant, but she told herself the impact was for the better. 

It had taken years for the lie to be exposed. Last night proved that she had been compromised. Lust told her that she killed Roy, and her reaction hadn’t been that of a Lieutenant losing her commanding officer. It had been that of a woman losing her love. That could have gotten her and Alphonse killed. It  _ would  _ have, if Roy hadn’t stepped in to save them.

Riza looks at herself in the mirror, and knows that she is a disgrace.

(She remembers sleeping with Reid, sleeping with Bresler, and now this. The latest step in a terrible pattern. Despite all of her public accolades, her recognition throughout the military as the Hawk’s Eye, the famed sniper, she’s always been a disgrace. She’s always been everything that a woman soldier shouldn’t be.) 

Riza curls up in bed, places a pillow over her head, and falls into a restless sleep. 

-

Falman and Fuery insist on trading off guard shifts for the rest of the day and through the night, and they keep her updated with phone calls. Riza wakes the following morning and stares up at the ceiling, too exhausted, too weighed down by sorrow, to move. 

She knows what day it is. This is normally a day of celebration for all of them. One of the best days of the year. They all have so many happy memories associated with it. Everything is different this year. 

Riza takes Black Hayate for a walk and measures food into his bowl. She takes a quick shower, readies herself for the day with brisk efficiency, and has a light breakfast. She wavers with indecision over her toast. Roy won’t want to commemorate this day, not with everything that has happened over the past several weeks. At the same time, it doesn’t feel right to just let it go unacknowledged. 

She stops by a bookstore on the way to the hospital.

-

Riza arrives at the hospital at nine-hundred hours to relieve Fuery. He’s standing guard outside of the door, and he greets her with a salute. “Good morning, Lieutenant! All was quiet through the night. Nothing to report.”

Riza hands him a brown bag containing a bagel sandwich from his favorite café. “Thank you, Fuery. Go and get some sleep.”

“I’m always happy to help. I’m glad that you got some rest too.” Fuery smiles at her and then salutes, before heading off. 

Riza knocks on the door twice and enters. There’s a flutter of nervousness inside her that is completely uncharacteristic (since when has she been nervous around Roy?) Her Colonel is alone in the room, sitting up in bed, his arms crossed over his chest. “Good morning, Hawkeye.”

“Good morning, sir.” Riza glances at Havoc’s empty bed, and Roy answers her unspoken question. 

“They’ve taken him in for an evaluation of whether a wheelchair or specialized crutches would be more appropriate.” 

Riza nods wordlessly. Roy had updated her over the phone late yesterday afternoon with the results of Havoc’s neurological evaluation, shared with Havoc’s permission. The physicians had found that the nerve signals were completely cut off from his lower body, meaning automail wasn’t a possibility.  _ How is he taking it?  _ Riza had asked, bowing her head. 

_ Right now, he’s complaining to Fuery about how he’ll have to come up with a better story about his retirement from the military, rather than telling people the truth about how he got stabbed by a woman.  _ Roy’s tone had been wooden.  _ But…  _

He trailed off. There had been no need to finish the sentence. The complete lack of nerve signals from the lower body had dire implications for many things. Both of them knew that much.

Riza had hung up the phone and cried.

Now, she steels herself, locking away those memories and that pain. She reaches out, offering him the second of her two paper bags. “Here, Colonel. I thought that this might divert your mind while you recover.”

Roy’s features soften in understanding. He takes the bag, and pulls out the book within, tracing his fingertips against the deep blue cover with its silver lettering. “The Jade Mountain.”

“The first complete translation of the Three Hundred Tang Poems into Amestrian.” It had been a lucky find on her part. “I appreciated that the translation includes the original Xingese characters alongside each translated poem.”

“It’s helpful. I’m certainly better at the spoken language than the written.” Roy opens the book, and then looks up at her. “Thank you, Lieutenant.”

“Of course, Colonel.” 

Roy averts his gaze, focusing on a point somewhere to the right of her shoulder. “About yesterday,” he says, his discomfort evident. “I hurt you. I...felt strongly about what I was trying to tell you. I could have been more gentle.”

“You don’t need to handle me carefully, sir.” This is exactly what Riza had feared yesterday. Roy sees her as fragile, now. Weak. Her commanding officer shouldn’t feel that she needs to be treated differently from any other soldier on the unit. “I understand your intentions.”

Roy looks as if there’s something he very much wants to say, but then he sighs, rubbing the back of his neck. “Will you read a couple of these to me? The print’s a little small, and my eyes are tired. I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

Of course he wouldn’t have. Not after the confirmation of Havoc’s condition. Riza acquiesces, taking the book and sitting at his side. “Shall I start from the beginning?”

Roy leans back against the pillows. “You can skip the translator’s notes and go straight to the first poem.”

“This is in the style of the five-character ancient verse, by the poet Du Fu.” Riza clears her throat before beginning. “To my retired friend, Wei,” she starts. 

“It is almost as hard for friends to meet

As for the morning and evening stars. 

Tonight then is a rare event, 

Joining, in the candlelight, 

Two men who were young not long ago,

But now are turning grey at the temples. 

...To find that half our friends are dead 

Shocks us, burns our hearts with grief. 

We little guessed it would be twenty years 

Before I could visit you again. 

When I went away, you were still unmarried; 

But now these boys and girls in a row 

Are very kind to their father's old friend. 

They ask me where I have been on my journey; 

And then, when we have talked a while, 

They bring and show me wines and dishes, 

Spring chives cut in the night-rain 

And brown rice cooked freshly in a special way. 

...My host proclaims it a festival, 

He urges me to drink ten cups -- 

But what ten cups could make me as drunk 

As I always am with your love in my heart?”

Riza’s voice catches in her throat. She can’t look at Roy. She misses Rebecca so fiercely, just as she knows that Roy is missing Hughes, and she had been an idiot to buy this book for him. She had been stupid to read this first poem. She should have opened the book to some other page, any other page. 

“ ...Tomorrow the mountains will separate us,” she continues, as bravely as she can. “After tomorrow - who can say?”

Silence hangs over them. 

“That was lovely.” Roy’s voice is barely audible.

In another time, she would have felt comfortable brushing the tears from the corners of her eyes in front of him. Now, Riza just blinks hard, hoping he won’t notice her emotional display. “It was.” 

She lowers the book, and she sees the tear slip out from underneath Roy’s closed eyelids. She nearly leans in and brushes it away, just as he’s done for her in the past. “Colonel,” Riza begins, instead, and she isn’t sure what she can say to make it better. 

“I can’t stop thinking about this day last year,” Roy confesses. He opens his eyes, and looks at her with such blank sorrow. 

Roy’s twenty-ninth birthday had been a year ago today. Hughes had taken the train to East City to celebrate with the unit, bringing one of Gracia’s famous apple pies with him. They had all gone out for dinner and drinks after work, and stayed out until last call. They had gotten ridiculously, unreasonably drunk - all of them, even her and Falman. Riza had woken up the next afternoon with a brutal hangover, a throat that ached from laughing, and no regrets.

“I know,” Riza whispers. 

“I know that all we can do in this life is move forward.” The words are nearly a cry. “But Hawkeye, I just want to go back.”

Riza rises instinctively, and Roy holds an arm out to her. She goes to him without a second thought, letting him wrap an arm around her, burying his head in the spot between her shoulder and neck. She puts her arms around him, rubbing his back, as he had done for her once. His muscles are tight and tense underneath her hands. Roy doesn’t even smell like himself, like the spicy aftershave and shampoo he’s used since he had been the sixteen-year-old boy she met fourteen years ago. That scent has been replaced by the clean neutrality of the hospital’s bath products. (Another part of him, lost.) 

_ I just want to go back.  _ They all do. Edward and Alphonse, especially, must feel that way every single day. “The path forward won’t be easy, sir. But I’ll be with you every step of the way, if you still want me,” Riza promises. 

_ Even into hell,  _ she had told him once. She had no idea, then. These past several weeks, ever since Hughes’ death, have certainly been that.

Roy brushes the backs of his fingers down her spine. The touch makes Riza shiver, even through her uniform coat. “I do,” he says quietly.

An unfamiliar, nervous giggle rings out. They release one another as if burned, Riza stepping several paces back. 

“So sorry to interrupt!” The nurse wheeling Havoc into the room looks as if she wants nothing more than for a chasm to open up in the floor and swallow her up entirely. 

Havoc just smirks at them. Roy glares daggers at Havoc as the nurse transfers him back onto the bed, and Havoc ignores him in favor of flirting with the nurse. Riza stares at the floor, cursing herself for being an idiot; for her egregiously unprofessional conduct. 

She and Roy are as close as he and Hughes had been. They have held one another during times of duress, to offer comfort and solace, as close friends do. But others wouldn’t understand the nature of their relationship. They would make assumptions. (They  _ do  _ already make assumptions. None of them are unaware of the rumors that have circulated over the past years, despite Roy’s reputation and his efforts to be seen in public with a different one of his informants a couple of times a month.) She should have been more careful.

The nurse leaves, with another apology to the two of them. 

“So…” Havoc lets the word hang, savoring their discomfort, before giving her a wolfish grin. “Where’s my hug?”

Roy scoffs at the abrupt release of tension. Riza sighs, and makes her way to the Second Lieutenant’s bedside. “Come here, Havoc.”

Havoc shrinks back in feigned fright. “I was kidding, Hawkeye. Please don’t finish me off, I still have the will to live.”

As dear as her unit is to her, Riza isn’t demonstrative about it. She prefers to convey her feelings with nothing more than the occasional pat to the shoulder or arm. (What people say about her and Roy is bad enough. She does  _ not  _ need anybody suggesting that she’s sleeping with anyone else on the team.) 

Riza leans in and hugs Havoc around the shoulders, squeezing him gently. She tries to say a great deal with the simple embrace.  _ It’s been difficult for you, and you’ve been so brave, trying to shield the Colonel and I from the pain you’re feeling, just to spare us our guilt. Everything will be all right. You’ll pull through this and make a good life for yourself, even if it is different from the one you envisioned for so long. And you will always, always, be one of us.  _

Havoc hugs her back. Riza draws away and looks into his eyes, and she sees perfect understanding there, and gratitude, before he glances at Roy and grins. “Thanks, Hawkeye. You smell nice. New shampoo?”

“Havoc, if you weren’t still recovering, I would--”

Roy is cut off by the door opening. Breda enters, still in his traveling coat, dusty and exhausted, dark circles under his eyes. He salutes them. “I got here as fast as I could. Colonel, Havoc, Hawkeye, I’m glad you’re alive.”

“You made it just in time.” Havoc smiles as he regards his oldest and best friend. “Hawkeye’s giving out free hugs this morning.”

Breda raises an eyebrow at her. “You didn’t mention he had a head injury.”

The three of them smile, for the first time in what feels like an eternity. “We’ll let you two catch up.” Roy checks the clock on the wall. “I have a meeting with an old friend in the lobby in ten minutes. Hawkeye, you can accompany me. Breda, come find me afterwards to deliver your report.”

-

They stop at the hospital library first, where Roy finds a volume on human anatomy, before proceeding to the lobby. Riza had expected the  _ old friend  _ would be Chris Mustang, or one of Roy’s informants. It’s a doctor that she faintly recognizes from Ishval, instead. Dr. Knox. 

Riza can’t help but overhear their whispered conversation as she stands guard, her back to them. She nearly shudders as she listens to Knox recount the way he and Roy had worked together in Ishval.  _ You’d burn them, and I’d dissect them,  _ Knox breathed.  _ Ishval was nothing but a huge, bloody laboratory, with human beings as the guinea pigs. _

It’s revolting. Repulsive. She hadn’t known - she hadn’t known that Knox had studied Roy’s victims. That they had been  _ dissected.  _ After their agonizing murders, being burned alive, they hadn’t been allowed peace and dignity, even in death. Their bodies had been desecrated further. 

“We’re not comrades in arms,” Knox murmurs. “We’re accomplices.” He rises to his feet. “If you keep walking these dangerous tightropes, one day you’re going to get a painful wakeup call.”

Riza doesn’t turn to face them. He already has. 

Roy tells Knox about Havoc. Knox confirms what they already know - that it’s unlikely that Havoc will ever be able to return to the military - before he heads off. Roy stares at his anatomy textbook, fingers tracing the detailed diagram of the human spine, lost in a reverie. 

“Colonel!” Breda’s voice jolts them out of the spell of silence. He approaches, pulling out a thick sheaf of somewhat battered papers from the pocket of his coat. “Here’s my report.”

“Thanks, Breda.” Roy takes the report, giving it a cursory glance, before turning back to the textbook.

Breda scans the vicinity to ensure that no one is within earshot, and then leans close. “About Havoc’s legs,” he whispers. “...We could ask Dr. Marcoh for help.”

The name sounds familiar, and Roy sits up straighter. For the first time since returning from the Third Laboratory, Riza sees hope and resolve cross his face. It isn’t a soft, gentle expression. It’s as fixed and intense as she’s ever seen him. 

“Is it possible to extend my vacation time?” Breda’s question is quiet and urgent. 

Roy closes the textbook hard. “I’ll take care of it. Good luck.”

Breda salutes them and heads straight for the hospital exit without a look back. Roy stares after him, and Riza realizes that her hands are digging into the faux leather upholstery of the sofa. “Dr. Marcoh?” she inquires, in the same undertone Breda had used. 

She has to strain to hear Roy’s response. “He’s the medical alchemist who possesses the Philosopher’s Stone.”

“The…” Riza trails off, stunned. She remembers that night just a couple of weeks ago, in the warehouse hideout with Falman and Barry. Where Barry had told them the gruesome details of how the Philosopher’s Stones, those artifacts of such immense power, were created. Each stone had been born out of blood, suffering, and human sacrifice. “You don’t intend to use such a thing, do you?”

“If anything has the power to heal Havoc, it’s that.” Roy stands. He stares straight ahead, refusing to look back at her. “I have to do whatever needs to be done to make things right for him. I don’t have the time for moral reservations right now.” 

Roy takes a couple of steps before he realizes she isn’t following. That she’s just staring at his back, her heart in her throat, torn. He glances over his shoulder at her. “We can discuss it later,” he says, a trace of impatience in his tone. “I’m not even sure that Marcoh still has it, or that he would hand it over to us. Come on.” 

Riza follows. 

There is so much she wants to say. (She wants to tell her Colonel that Havoc is a good man, honest and ethical, and he surely wouldn’t want to use an artifact created from human sacrifice in order to regain his abilities. She wants to tell Roy that she never wants to hear him say the words  _ I don’t have the time for moral reservations  _ ever again. Ever. That’s not him. That’s not her Colonel. That’s not her Roy.) 

But maybe now isn’t the time for her to speak up. Not with the amount of stress Roy has been under. 

So Riza keeps silent. 

-

Breda returns the following morning, alone, with the worst possible news. He tells them that Dr. Marcoh has been abducted by one of the homunculi, and they discuss their next steps in low voices as they return to the hospital room. “We can’t have you search for Marcoh alone, Breda.” Roy glances at her. “What do you think about sending Falman or Fuery along as backup for Breda?”

Riza gives him a terse shake of her head. “Impossible, sir. Falman, Fuery, and I have barely been keeping on top of the unit’s work as it is, with you and Havoc out of commission, and Breda away on his missions. If we lose one more member of the unit, we’ll fall too far behind.” 

“I was followed for a time, on my way back from Marcoh’s town,” Breda tells them softly. “I lost my pursuers, of course. But I think it’s safe to say that I can’t move around as freely anymore.”

Roy’s expression hardens in frustration. “So we’re stuck.”

They stop a few paces from Havoc and Roy’s hospital room, watching as a sniffling Eva Havoc exits the room, accompanied by a tall, middle-aged Major Riza doesn’t recognize. Eva doesn’t see them, occupied as she is with dabbing the tears from her eyes with her handkerchief. She looks like she’s aged a decade from when she had visited Havoc in East City last year.

“Who was that?” Roy asks, as they make their way inside. 

“My mom, of course, and someone from the discharge office.” Havoc is lying in bed, his eyes closed. He looks small and defeated in a way that Riza has never seen before. “It’s official. I’m being discharged as of the end of this week.” 

Breda’s jaw clenches, like he’s struggling to process Havoc’s words. “Why can’t they move you into some kind of administrative or support role? What are you going to do as a civilian?”

Havoc shrugs, a fractional, exhausted movement. “I’ll go back to my family’s place in Womiob and process orders at the store, I guess.” 

“It’s not certain yet that you can’t be cured,” Roy snaps. “This is too hasty on their part, and on yours. You can’t give up. You have to advocate for yourself.” 

Havoc’s fingers tighten around the bedsheets. “I’m not stupid, sir,” he says wearily. “I know when I’m no longer useful. The military has no use for someone like me. Someone who can’t even move.” 

And Riza feels her heart break clean in two, as Roy and Havoc clash for the last time, as Breda calms Havoc, as Roy finally turns his back on Havoc and strides out of the room. 

She would follow him normally, but right now, Havoc needs her more. Riza places her hands on Havoc’s shoulders. He’s hunched over, bent double, gasping for breath, face flushed with anger and pain. She eases him back against the pillows as gently as she can. 

“Second Lieutenant Havoc.” Riza addresses him by his full rank, in the hope that the formality will ground him. “You have to understand that the Colonel isn’t capable of giving up on anyone. You know that he didn’t forsake me when I gave up. He asked me to keep protecting him.”

Havoc swipes the back of his hand against his sweat-damp forehead, pushing away the strands of hair clinging to his skin. “He’s a fool, Hawkeye,” he replies shortly. “There’s no way he can rise to the top in this country, of all places, by being so soft.”

It’s an interesting choice of words.  _ Soft  _ is the last word Riza would have used to describe her Colonel since Hughes had been murdered. No… the softness that Roy once had has been replaced by hard edges and cold, grim, single-minded focus. 

But Havoc is right, in a way. It’s caring that underlies it all. Roy’s desire to discover the truth of why his best friend had been so callously murdered. His desire to make things right for Havoc.

Riza tries to smile, and isn’t quite successful. “There’s a place for at least one fool like that in this world.”

-

She stays with Breda and Havoc until Havoc seems calmer, and then excuses herself, leaving in search of Roy. Every step is an effort. After the emotional rigor of the past few days and the physical toll taken by too little sleep, she is tired in a way that sinks down to her bones. Even her frequent cups of black tea aren’t doing much to keep her feeling sharp and alert.

Riza finds her Colonel sitting on a bench at the end of the hallway. He has a hand pressed to his side, and he breathes hard. He appears as worn out as she feels. “Please don’t push yourself so hard, Colonel,” she counsels. It makes her ill at ease to see him looking so...ragged, on the verge of a nervous or physical collapse. “You’ll reopen your wound.”

Roy doesn’t look at her. He stares at the floor, and she can tell that he’s making up his mind about something. “Bring me my uniform, Lieutenant.”

Riza stiffens. “Sir, you’re still in no condition to check out of here.” 

“Just bring it.” Roy’s tone brooks no argument, and the way he glares at her--

Riza nods, and bites back her sorrow. “Yes, sir.”

* * *

_to be continued_

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the lack of a weekly update last Thursday - I was dealing with a family health crisis that is, thankfully, much better now.
> 
> This chapter is dedicated to my fiancé, as well as to @thatisadamnfinecupofcoffee, @firewoodfigs, @poorlifedecisionsemily, @annewithane, @niconiconina, @miename, @priscilladm, Natalie, Caroline, and Jenny. Friends can be such a valuable source of strength and support during difficult times.
> 
> I hope that the angst in this chapter wasn't too much. The way I like to write is pretending that the characters are real people, and Riza is going through hell right now. One of her closest friends has had a life-altering injury, the rest of her unit is in danger, she's far away from two of her strongest sources of support and unable to confide in them over the phone, and her most significant relationship is going through some serious challenges and changes right now. 
> 
> It was difficult and painful to write about how Roy's behavior has triggered some of Riza's old trauma - her fear of disappointing the men in her life and being cast aside and replaced by someone better. While my heart breaks for Riza, I also have empathy for Roy as he descends further into his own personal hell. 
> 
> Additionally, I hope that you enjoyed the chapter and didn't feel like it was too slow / not enough happened. I think Havoc's injury is one of the biggest crises that befalls Team Mustang, after Hughes' death, and I wanted to give it the weight it deserves.
> 
> The poem that Riza read to Roy can be found in The Three Hundred Tang Poems. The poet is Du Fu; the title is To My Retired Friend, Wei. 
> 
> As always, thank you so much for reading. To all of you who left kudos and comments on the previous chapter, I really appreciate it. Comments are always treasured; please let me know what you think!


	10. ten

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Important note: Excerpts of the dialogue and events in this chapter are taken from the manga and Brotherhood; they are not original content.
> 
> Additionally, excerpts of the beginning of this chapter were adapted from my other fic, "illicit affairs."

Riza brings her Colonel his uniform. Roy thanks her with a terse nod and disappears into one of the hospital bathrooms to get ready. He comes out a short while later, fully dressed in the blue wool uniform and his familiar black overcoat. He looks like himself for the first time in days, though his skin still has an unhealthy pallor, the dark circles underneath his eyes standing out like bruises.

Riza stands by his side without offering a comment as Roy signs the paperwork confirming that he is discharging himself against medical advice. He keeps his posture straight, his steps brisk, as they descend the five flights of stairs to the main floor of the hospital. Riza keeps a careful eye on him without being obvious about the fact that she is doing so, ready to support him if he should stagger or falter. 

She has spent the majority of the past days in the hospital, underneath its harsh fluorescent lights, breathing in the stale, artificially cool air with its ever-present scent of antiseptics. Riza breathes a sigh of relief as they step out into the sunshine, savoring the feeling of the breeze against her skin. Roy tilts his head up to the sky, but seems unmoved by the bright, cloudless blue above them; by the pale pink plum blossoms that flutter from their branches in the breeze and swirl around them, before coming to rest gently on the sidewalk beneath their feet. 

(As long as Riza has known him, Roy has always appreciated nature and its beauty. Even when they had been twelve and sixteen, and barely knew one another outside of the quiet dinners shared across the kitchen table every night at Hawkeye Manor, he used to offer comments on the blossoming of the flowers in Riza’s garden - Mother’s garden, once - or the changing of the leaves when the seasons turned.

It’s like he doesn’t even see the beauty of the day around them now, and it makes something inside Riza clench up tight.)

“We should head to the office.” Roy pulls out his car keys from the pocket of his coat, and then frowns. “Is my car still at the Third Laboratory? I forgot to ask, with everything that’s been going on.”

Riza indicates the hospital parking lot. “Falman moved it here.” 

“How?”

Roy sounds genuinely befuddled, and Riza smiles for the first time since greeting Black Hayate in the morning. “He hot-wired it.”

“Interesting,” Roy mutters. “It’s always the quiet ones.”

Riza is still weighing the safety of him driving, and the level of strain that would put on his still-healing wounds, when he tosses her the car keys. “You can drive us.”

She inclines her head, grateful that she didn’t have to be the one to broach the topic. “Of course.”

“We should stop at my apartment first.” Roy moves gingerly while fastening his seat belt, and carefully angles himself in an attempt to conceal his wince of discomfort from her. “I need to pick up my journal. I assume that you removed it from my office for safekeeping.”

“I did.” Riza turns the key in the ignition, and the car purrs to life. “But I didn’t take it to your apartment. It’s been unguarded all day and night, so anyone could have ransacked the place to find it.”

The contents of Roy’s journal are enough to have him imprisoned for high treason at best, and executed at worst. His notes are heavily encoded, of course, but no code is unbreakable. “Where do you have it, then?” he asks. 

“The safest place I could think of. On my person.” Riza feels a peculiar lurching sensation in her stomach as soon as the words leave her lips. (Father believed the same thing - that the safest place for his work to be encoded was on her skin.) Roy glances at her, alarmed, as if his thought had been identical to hers. “It’s in the hidden inner pocket I sewed into my uniform coat,” she clarifies. “I’ll get it out for you at the next stoplight, if you want.” 

The thought rises, unbidden, that she has been carrying the secrets of two alchemists with her over these past few days. Father’s, as well as Roy’s. The first Flame Alchemist, and the last. Riza’s fingers tighten around the steering wheel. She exhales, slow and even, forcing herself to relax. Forcing the sorrow back and down, where it belongs. 

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Roy says quietly. “I appreciate your circumspection. That was clever.”

The praise warms her. (She’s had little enough of it from him lately - it feels as though they have been at odds more often than not these past couple of weeks.) “Thank you, Colonel.” 

Riza updates him on the unit’s attempts to keep on top of their regular work duties at Central Command as they drive. Roy is responsive, but he seems preoccupied, his fingers tapping an irregular pattern on the side of the car door. There’s little that seems to hold his attention for long these days, outside of mentally working through the conspiracy and Hughes’ murder. Part of her had been surprised that he’d even remembered to grab the book of poetry she had given him before leaving his hospital room. He holds it tightly with his free hand, knuckles almost white with the strength of his grip. 

It’s not a long drive from the hospital to Central Command. Riza finds one of the few empty spots in the parking lot at this hour, and hands the car keys to her Colonel as they enter the building. Thankfully, the hallways aren’t too crowded, but everyone they do pass stares at Roy with undisguised curiosity. News of his and Havoc’s injuries in the field, while working an operation that no one knew anything about, have spread through Central Command like wildfire over the past days. 

Roy seems unfazed by the attention. He offers everyone his patented, charming smile, and greets several officers they pass by name, as if nothing is amiss. He makes it all look so effortless, as if he’s not still wounded and hardly able to move without significant discomfort. 

Riza opens the door to their unit’s office, and the two of them enter. Her steps almost falter at the realization of how empty it is, with Havoc still hospitalized (never to return to this office, or any other military command center) and Breda keeping him company for now. She remains steady, and nods in greeting to Falman and Fuery. Both of them are sitting at their desks, which are covered with towering piles of paperwork. 

“Good morning, Colonel, Lieutenant!” Fuery salutes them. There’s a spatter of ink on his nose, and he has the slightly wild-eyed look he always gets when he has drunk too much coffee. “It’s nice to see you out of the hospital, Colonel!” 

“At ease, Fuery.” Roy surveys the state of the young Master Sergeant’s desk. “Thank you for everything that you did to help the Lieutenant stand guard at the hospital, as well as assisting Falman here. He wouldn’t have been able to make it these last few days without your help.”

Riza looks toward Falman. From what she has heard from Fuery, Falman has all but moved into the office for the better part of the past week in order to handle his work, Havoc’s, and Breda’s. He’s on the phone right now, holding a hushed conversation, a pinched, stressed expression on his face. 

Falman hangs up and sighs, before standing up and saluting them. “Lieutenant, Colonel! It is a relief to see you again.”

“Is something wrong?” Riza asks. It’s rare to see Falman so visibly overwhelmed, especially in the office and not in the field. 

Falman sinks back down into his seat. “I apologize for not telling both of you about this earlier,” he says reluctantly. “I did not want to cause undue stress. I just received a call from my friend at the Central City Library about Edward.”

Riza’s shoulders tense. “Edward?”

“Fullmetal?” Roy echoes, sounding more annoyed than concerned. “What’s he up to now?”

“Edward has been traveling around the city for the past day, ever since he returned with Breda.” Falman hesitates. “He has been keeping an unusually high profile.”

Roy frowns. “What’s that supposed to mean?” 

“He has been performing extraordinarily public acts of alchemy, sir. Mostly repairing broken things, large or small. Ranging from damaged prams and worn-out clothing, to broken-down cars and condemned apartment buildings, restoring them to brand-new condition. He just repaired a heavily damaged shop-front across the street from the Central City Library.” Falman picks up a newspaper from his desk, offering it to them. “There was an article about his public service in this morning’s paper as well.”

Riza takes the paper and scans the front-page article. The article is accompanied by a photograph of Edward offering an unusually charismatic  _ man-of-the-people- _ esque grin - one that looks oddly similar to the one that Roy makes during public appearances. She can’t guess at Edward’s motivations in this, but it is disconcerting to consider the amount of unwanted attention that this could bring him and Alphonse. Especially from their enemies, who have already crossed paths with the brothers on more than one occasion.

Roy snatches the paper from her. “What an idiot,” he fumes, as he reads the article. “What does he think he’s doing, trying to draw our enemies out into the open like this? Does he think he can handle them himself? He doesn’t have enough sense to know when to let the adults take care of things.”

“That’s not the worst of it, sir.” Fuery pushes his glasses up on his nose and regards them unhappily. “I’ve been monitoring the surveillance devices I planted throughout the city, and it looks like Scar is in Central again.” 

Riza exchanges a glance with her Colonel. For a split second, she sees her own shock mirrored in his face, before his expression shutters again. The mere mention of Scar sends a shiver of dread down her spine. What he had done to Nina Tucker, and how he had threatened Roy and Edward… 

Despite all of that, and how fraught Scar had made their last several weeks in East City, in the mess of Hughes’ murder and the slowly emerging truth of the conspiracy and the homunculi, she had nearly forgotten about Scar. About the tremendous danger that he posed to Roy and to Edward. This is the worst possible time for him to resurface.

Roy’s jaw clenches. “We need to find Fullmetal now,” he grits out. “Come, Lieutenant.” 

He leaves the office without another word. “Thank you for the information,” Riza says quickly, to Falman and Fuery, before following him. “Breda will be along to help you shortly.”

They salute her. “Stay safe, Hawkeye!”

Roy is halfway down the corridor by the time Riza catches up with him. They proceed back to the car in tense silence, and he hands her the car keys as they approach. “How do you intend to go about searching for Edward, sir?” Riza asks, as she starts up the car. 

“It’s around lunchtime. He’ll probably be eating somewhere.” Roy taps his fingers against the side of the door, a quick, irregular beat. “You know him and Alphonse well. What places does Fullmetal like?”

Riza pauses for a moment, thinking back to her conversations with the Elric brothers; to the time she had taken them out for lunch when they had been in Central last year. “They might be at Forester, on the corner of Bard and Walnut. Edward likes the sandwiches there.” 

Roy says nothing at all while they drive, which is unusual for him.  _ Was,  _ Riza realizes, with a pang. It  _ was  _ unusual for him. It isn’t any longer. In East City, the two of them never drove in silence. Roy would think out loud, plotting and scheming as he always liked to do, and he would bounce ideas off her, asking her,  _ Hawkeye, what do you think of that?  _ She would offer him her input, and most of the time, he took it into consideration. 

Since Hughes’ murder; since moving to Central, especially, Roy has been quieter. (Around everyone. Around her.) More prone to long, almost brooding silences, spells of intense concentration. 

Riza can’t think about that now. She splits her attention evenly between the road, and scanning the streets for any sign of Scar. He might know what Roy’s car looks like by now. She should have convinced him to leave this car in East City and buy a new one when they moved to Central. 

She makes a right turn onto Walnut Street, and recognizes Alphonse’s imposing figure at once, the sunlight gleaming off his metal suit of armor. He and Edward are sitting at a table at the patio. Alphonse sits up properly, a young gentleman, while Edward lounges back in his chair, legs thrown up on the table. 

Riza pulls up in front of them. Edward recognizes the car at once, and fixes it with a glower, while Alphonse waves at Riza. Roy rolls down the window. “I heard about all of your acts of altruism,” he says coolly. “You’re behaving somewhat out of character, Fullmetal - repairing things instead of destroying them.”

Edward rises, saunters over, and then leans into the car. “Hey, Lieutenant,” he greets, before narrowing his eyes at Roy. “Second Lieutenant Ross told me everything.”

“That’s good.” Roy doesn’t offer even a perfunctory apology for concealing the truth about the situation from Edward.

Edward hesitates, the irritation fading from his face. “I heard about Second Lieutenant Havoc, too.”

Roy closes his eyes for the briefest of moments, obviously stricken by the reminder of Havoc’s situation. “...I see.”

Edward leans in, lowering his voice, for once. “Couldn’t Dr. Marcoh cure him?” he presses. 

Of course he would ask that. Sorrow stirs inside Riza. Edward still tends to see alchemy as the answer to everything, despite his awful experience with his mother. She has spent enough time with him and Alphonse over the past years to know that Edward thinks of the Philosopher’s Stones, especially, as the ultimate solution to his and Alphonse’s predicament. He views them as their own sort of holy grail. 

But Edward doesn’t know the gruesome truth of how the Philosopher’s Stones are created. And if he did know, would he still want to use them? It seems impossible. Edward and Alphonse refuse to take lives in combat. They have such gentle hearts, and such strong principles. She can’t imagine them making the choice to use artifacts born out of human sacrifice for their own benefit. 

( _ But Roy would,  _ something inside Riza whispers. For the dozenth time, his words at the hospital drift back to her.  _ I have to do what needs to be done. I don’t have the time for moral reservations right now. _ ) 

Riza quells that memory at once, but her unease lingers. From what she understands, from conversations with Edward and Roy, the Philosopher’s Stone is Edward and Alphonse’s only hope of restoring their bodies. Without the use of the Stone, Alphonse will remain in his metal suit of armor forever. Unable to eat, unable to sleep, unable to feel touch. Condemned to never know the warmth of an embrace, or the sweet comfort of a kiss to the brow. 

The cruelty of the thought is almost enough to make her recoil. She hates to think of an innocent child forced to live that way, forever.

Roy shifts in his seat, visibly preoccupied. Riza can see how concerned he is with the matter of Marcoh’s disappearance - which, it seems, the Elric brothers don’t know about yet. “Get in,” he orders. “I’ll get you both caught up on things.”

Edward joins her at the front, and he glances at her out of the corner of his eye. “I’m glad you’re okay after everything, Lieutenant.”

His concern is touching. Riza swallows over her suddenly dry throat, shame and embarrassment pricking at her again. Her breakdown at the Third Laboratory; her failure to protect Alphonse from Lust… She wonders, briefly, if Alphonse had told Edward what happened. Not just about how she had let him down, but how she had lost her composure when she thought Roy had fallen in combat. 

“Thank you, Edward,” Riza replies, as steadily as she can. “Alphonse was truly heroic on that night.” 

Edward beams with pride. “Yeah, that sounds like him.” 

Behind them, Alphonse carefully maneuvers himself into the back seat. It is a tight fit at the best of times, when he is the only passenger. Now, forced to share with Roy, her Colonel is effectively squished against the passenger side door. Alphonse nearly elbows him in the head as he attempts to straighten himself. “I’m sorry, Colonel!” 

“It’s fine,” Roy mutters. “On second thought, we should probably talk outside.”

Riza drives them to a much emptier side street, and they all disembark. She barely listens to Edward and Roy’s conversation, keeping her attention trained on their surroundings. The exhaustion that has plagued her for the past few days is forgotten; she’s as alert as if she had taken a caffeine pill. Riza’s gaze jumps from the roofs of the nearby buildings, to their empty windows, to the alleys that feed into this street. A sense of foreboding, dark and heavy, coils around her like a snake. Every single breath, every moment, brings with it the terrible awareness that Scar is back. Between him and the homunculi, Roy and Edward and Alphonse are constantly under threat. 

She exhales, trying to calm herself, to no avail. The sense of foreboding grows, mounting by the second, until it grows into an immense, immediate awareness of impending danger. The last time Riza had felt this was back in her sniper tower, when she had felt Gluttony advancing on her. She had trusted her instincts then, and that had saved her life. She has to do the same thing now. 

Behind her, Roy and Edward abandon all semblance of professionalism, sniping at one another like a pair of children. They’re being so loud that they are blocking out important auditory information, and Riza bristles. “Shut up, both of you!”

She normally doesn’t speak to them so harshly, and they both turn toward her, taken aback. There is no time for explanation. The threat is upon them now. She can feel it.

Riza draws her handgun and cocks it, pointing it into the nearest alley, just as Scar emerges from the shadows. He faces them with an eerie, almost preternatural calm. It is a sharp contrast to her own state of mind, to the fierce, sudden anger that floods through her veins. This is like the Third Laboratory all over again. She has been faced with a threat, but this time, she can rise to meet it. She isn’t powerless, she isn’t useless, against a flesh-and-blood enemy like Scar. Quite the opposite, in fact. She won’t let anyone endanger her Colonel again, or Edward and Alphonse. 

Riza aims her gun directly at Scar’s head, intending to finish this here and now. The blood pounds in her ears. This is enough. He has terrorized her loved ones enough. 

“Hold on, Lieutenant!” Edward cries. “Don’t shoot!”

He actually grabs onto her arm to stop her. Riza tries to shake him off, but his metal hand is too strong. “What are you talking about?” she demands. 

Edward gives her a quick grin, almost feral with excitement. “I’m about to do some fishing.” 

He charges right toward Scar before she can do anything to stop him. Scar reacts with lightning-quick speed, creating an alchemical explosion that rends the ground beneath them into shreds. Riza stumbles, barely managing to keep her footing as she staggers clear of the blast, and Roy and Alphonse narrowly avoid being knocked to their feet as well. 

“Did he say  _ fishing _ ?” Roy gasps. “What the hell did he mean by that?”

“I’m sorry about this, Colonel.” Alphonse keeps a careful eye on Scar and Edward, ready to leap into the fray at any moment to protect his brother. “We should have told you our plan. We’re going to lure out the homunculi by using Brother as bait, since they can’t afford to let him die.”

“That is insane!” Roy snaps. For the first time in several weeks, Riza actually finds herself agreeing with him. 

Alphonse, normally so gentle and mild-mannered, refuses to back down. “We’re going to move forward with our plan,” he insists. “We’re not going to let anyone else get hurt again in dealing with these homunculi. They’ve proven that they don’t want to harm Brother and I, so us serving as bait is the only option. You of all people should see that, Colonel.” 

Roy scowls. “You two are gambling with your lives, and the odds are against you,” he says brusquely. “What are you going to do if Scar is shot down by the MP before the homunculi get here?”

“You’ll have to make sure that doesn’t happen, Colonel,” Alphonse responds. He sounds so grown up all of a sudden, just like he had on that night in the Third Laboratory. Riza blinks, momentarily stunned by the change in him. She remembers when Alphonse was just a little boy who tried to get her to convince Edward to allow him to adopt a cat. That hadn’t been so long ago, had it? 

Despite their youth, they are so brave, both of them. So dedicated to protecting others, after what had happened to Hughes and Havoc. What had almost happened to Roy. 

Be that as it may, she isn’t comfortable with this plan of theirs. Roy is Edward’s commanding officer, and she may be merely a Lieutenant to Edward’s Major, but he respects her as a commanding officer and always has. Neither of them can allow Edward and Alphonse to take the sole burden upon themselves in this way and endanger themselves like this. 

To Riza’s surprise, her Colonel actually smiles at Alphonse. She catches a flash of pride, there and gone so quickly she could have blinked and missed it, in his expression. “You two have a lot of nerve, to give me orders like that. Fine. But when you catch your homunculus, keep it alive for me.” 

His tone carries some of that quiet, disturbing menace she heard before, on the night that she apprehended Barry the Chopper. Alphonse salutes him. “Roger that!” he says, just like a soldier. Without another word, he bounds forward, jumping into the fight between Edward and Scar. 

Scar retaliates by igniting another explosion, and both of them are forced to retreat. Roy grabs her arm, pulling her with him as they run to an adjacent street. “Colonel, we can’t allow this,” Riza protests, looking back over her shoulder. 

Roy glances around at their surroundings, not even listening to her. “This is perfect.” His eyes gleam with excitement, and he grins for the first time in days. “Do you know where we are? Fuery’s second apartment is nearby. Let’s move out.” 

Recognition sparks in her. Fuery’s second apartment, which doubles as a safe house and surveillance and communication station, is just a couple of neighborhoods away. It’s too far for them to make it on foot in a timely manner, but Roy’s car is lying on its side back on the street where Edward, Scar, and Alphonse are still fighting. If it hasn’t been torn to pieces by now. The intensity of their combat is making the ground tremble, even a street away, and the air is rife with the roar of alchemical explosions and shattering earth and concrete. 

The disturbance is drawing civilian attention. Crowds of civilians flee the streets and sidewalks, huddling in the shelter of shopfronts. A car is stopped in the middle of the road. An elderly couple stands outside, the husband’s arm placed protectively around his wife’s shoulders, holding her steady. 

Riza makes up her mind in a split second. “Central Military Command!” she calls. “We are temporarily requisitioning this vehicle!” 

The couple acquiesces at once, looking terrified. The husband tosses her the car keys, and he and his wife hurry off the street and into one of the nearby shops. Riza dashes the rest of the way to the car, Roy close behind her. She throws herself into the driver’s seat, studying the vehicle. It’s a different model than Roy’s, and unfamiliar to her, but she orients herself with the controls within a couple of seconds. 

She throws the car into drive and pushes her foot down on the accelerator with speed that is more typical of Roy’s driving style than hers. They careen down the street, the tires squealing, and the car fishtails slightly when Riza makes a right turn. Thankfully, the streets are free of other vehicles and pedestrians alike. “Do you have the keys to the apartment, sir?”

“Right here.” Roy fishes them out from an inner pocket of his coat, holding them tight. 

They make it to Fuery’s apartment in under five minutes, and rush up four flights of stairs to Apartment 413. The key sticks in the lock, and Roy curses impatiently, slamming the door with his shoulder and forcing it open. 

Apartment 413 would have been a completely nondescript one-bedroom apartment, if not for the vast and elaborate communication array Fuery had established in the living room. Roy immediately settles himself in one of the chairs, as Riza locks the front door behind them and does a quick security check of the apartment. “Clear,” she announces, returning to the living room. 

Roy flips through the notepad that Fuery had left out on one of the tables. “That kid really is something else,” he says. “Here’s the frequency for the MP headquarters.”

Riza gets to work at once, tuning both of their radios to the appropriate frequency. She hands her Colonel a pair of headphones, before placing hers on. Roy immediately begins impersonating MP officers, using a range of different voices from deep and gravelly, to measured and calm, to nasal and panicked, as he calls in reports of attacks from Scar and requests reinforcement in every sector from Sector Three to Sector Seventeen. He actually laughs, exhilarated. “This is getting fun.” 

Riza can’t help but roll her eyes. She has lost count of the times her Colonel has criticized Edward for being chaotic and uncontrollable in the field, but he’s a hypocrite. For someone who is usually such an excellent tactician and strategist, Roy actually thrives on chaos. 

She listens intently to the MP chatter coming in over her headphones, from the MP headquarters itself as well as from each of the separate patrols out on the streets. Riza sits up straight, alarmed. “They’ve just said that the Fuhrer himself has entered the field.” 

“Interesting,” Roy murmurs. They share a look, and Riza knows that they are both recalling the suspicion about the Fuhrer that he had voiced while in the hospital. “Very interesting.” 

They lapse into a strained silence, immersed in monitoring the chatter on their separate radio channels. It is an intensely frustrating experience to receive such a disjointed, chaotic picture of events as they are unfolding. Finally, Roy adjusts his headset, pulling one of the ear coverings away from his face. “They’re near Saint Louis Street. You can go and provide backup.” 

Riza knows a moment of relief that she will be able to collect Edward and Alphonse; that this overly risky operation can come to an end within minutes. She sets her headphones down and rises to her feet. “Yes, sir.”

“Let your hair down and get out of those clothes,” Roy says, lost in thought, as he scribbles something into his journal. Then he coughs self-consciously. “I don’t want you to be recognized by anyone you might run into.”

Riza’s face feels warm. (She’s heard enough men say similar things to her before, but she had never really expected to hear those words come out of her Colonel’s mouth.) “All right.” 

She makes her way to the wardrobe in the back of the room, pulling it open and retrieving a pair of tan pants to replace her uniform pants. Riza changes as quickly as she can in the privacy of the dark bedroom, her mind racing, hoping that Edward and Alphonse won’t have moved too far by the time she reaches them. She returns to the wardrobe and pulls off her blue uniform coat, slipping a tan coat on top of her high-necked black undershirt. As an afterthought, she grabs a pair of Fuery’s spare glasses from the shelf, before doing a check of her weapons. 

Roy tears a piece of paper free from his journal and hands it to her. “I’ve secured an empty house in the suburbs for us to use. Wait for me there, and make sure you’re not followed.”

“Yes, sir. If I need to get in touch, I’ll call you here, so please don’t move,” Riza stresses. She looks down at the address, committing it to memory, and then turns to leave. 

“All right.” There is something evasive in her Colonel’s tone, like he is brushing her off, and Riza narrows her eyes at the back of his head. 

“Do not enter the field, sir,” she orders - as if she was the commanding officer and Roy was the subordinate. She would have hesitated to speak so bluntly, considering the way he has been with her lately, but it can’t be avoided. He is still injured from the Third Laboratory and undoubtedly in no shape to engage in further combat. Scar had been a match for Roy when he was healthy. As things stand now, Scar could finish Roy off without batting an eyelid. 

Roy looks back at her, and instead of glaring at her, or snapping, he gives her a surprisingly soft smile. “I know.” 

_ Focus,  _ Riza instructs herself as she leaves. She slides Fuery’s glasses on, blinking at the subtle change to her vision, and then lets her hair down, rushing down to the car and hopping in. She speeds over to Saint Louis Street, taking back roads and side streets the entire way, to avoid the MP as well as the emergency vehicles that have started to flood the main roads. Sirens and explosions shatter the air, and the news of the unrest must have spread - the civilians who were out and about earlier have deserted the streets. 

The car skids onto Saint Louis Street at just over one hundred kilometers per hour, and Riza assesses the situation with a glance. She sees Scar, Edward, Alphonse, and a dark-haired boy she doesn’t recognize, wearing a bright yellow coat in the Xingese fashion. This must be the Ling Yao that Breda had informed her and Roy about. Astonishingly, the monstrous Gluttony lies subdued at Ling’s feet, elaborately trussed up and tied into a massive ball. 

Riza draws her weapon one-handed, firing at Scar and catching him in the leg as she takes a sharp right, pulling directly in front of Ling and Gluttony. “Get in, now!” she shouts. She had passed an MP patrol just a few blocks back, and they could arrive at any second. “We have to move!”

Ling hefts Gluttony into the car and leaps in after him. Riza is dismayed to see that they take up the entire back seat, leaving no room for Edward and Alphonse. They’re both rushing toward her, frantic expressions on their faces. “Wait, Hawk--” Edward starts, and Riza shakes her head at him, willing him to understand the need for secrecy. 

He slows, and Riza wishes that she could stay even a couple of seconds to explain, but she presses her foot down on the accelerator and makes a rapid left turn off Saint Louis Street. In the rearview mirror, she catches a glimpse of the MP vehicles roaring onto the street she had just fled. It had been a necessary course of action, considering her cargo, but remorse stabs at her for abandoning the brothers like that. 

“Who are you?” Ling demands, shouting to be heard over the sirens on neighboring streets and the rush of wind as they speed down the street. 

Riza doesn’t look back at him. She keeps her eyes trained on the road as she anxiously scans her peripherals. She  _ hates  _ that this car is one of those flashy convertible models, with both the front seat and back seat completely exposed. A homunculus, a  _ monster,  _ is secured openly in the back seat, and if anyone - homunculus, military official, MP, or civilian - sees them, then she has put the entire operation at risk. The consequences of such a thing are dire. Hughes had been murdered for what the unit has now uncovered. 

“I work with Second Lieutenant Heymans Breda, who you’ve met before,” Riza replies, making a hasty turn into a side street in order to avoid yet another MP patrol car. “He told me everything. I’m taking us straight to a safe house.”

“Wait!” Ling calls. “We have to pick up my friend first!”

Riza bites back an uncharacteristic snap. What does he think this is, a taxi service? The MP could be pursuing them already. “We don’t have time for that!”

“Please!” Ling leans close, his distress etched clearly onto his face. “If we don’t help her, she’ll die! She’s waiting for my help!”

His frantic desire to help a comrade, his dedication to her, reminds her of one person. Even the dark hair and the complexion are the same. “Fine,” Riza snaps, throwing a worried look at the rearview mirror. “But we have to make it quick. Where is she?”

Ling stares at the street signs that blur past, mumbling the names to himself for a moment, before it comes back to him. “Off Providence Street!”

Thankfully, it’s not far. Ling directs her to stop at an alley at the end of Providence, and he jumps out of the car before she can even stop completely, running down the alley. Riza stares at Gluttony, and then at the empty street, torn, before following Ling at a run. 

Ling leads her to a manhole cover halfway down the alley. He stomps on the metal cover three times, and then bends over, lifting it free of its spot with a small huff of exertion. Riza is shocked to see a pale, dark-haired girl peering up at them from the gloom. There is a sheen of sweat on the girl’s face, and her skin has an unhealthy pallor, just like Roy’s had this morning when checking out of the hospital. Her dark eyes are red and swollen.

“Lan Fan,” Ling cries. “I’m here - it’s okay - can you grab my hand?” 

He drops to his knees and offers his hand to the girl - Lan Fan - for support. Ling helps her climb up, supporting her with his arms around her. To Riza’s horror, the girl’s left arm is truncated in a stump covered in makeshift, bloody cloth bandages. Her pants are in tatters, the fabric torn off below the knees, and she sways on her feet. From the look of it, she’s lost a lot of blood. 

“What happened?” Riza asks, reaching out to steady her as the three of them return to the car. 

Ling wraps a protective arm around Lan Fan as her head lolls against his shoulder. “She’s my bodyguard. She did this to herself to save me, to save both of us, from that homunculus and the other one that was pursuing us.” 

Riza’s mind sticks on that, on  _ she did this to herself to save me,  _ for an instant, fixating on the amount of dedication and devotion it would take to amputate one’s own arm without pain medication. “We need to get out of here now. I’ll take both of you to a safe place, and she needs medical attention immediately. I’m not a doctor, but I can get one for her.”

Ling lifts Lan Fan into his arms, and they hurry back to the car. Luckily, the street is still empty, and Gluttony is still stunned and subdued. As soon as Ling and Lan Fan are settled, Riza slams her foot down on the accelerator. Her palms are damp with sweat against the steering wheel, and her heart pounds. She can’t stop thinking about where Edward, Alphonse, and Roy are, and if the girl in the back seat is going to survive. Lan Fan looks no older than Edward and Ling. She must be sixteen, at most. Still a child. Far too young to die. 

Thankfully, they make it out of the city and into the suburbs without incident. The house at the address Roy had provided is on the very outskirts of the suburbs, with no neighbors for kilometers around, and it’s bordered by the Central Forest. Riza pulls up in front of the house and throws the car into park. She turns around to check on the situation. Lan Fan is nestled against Ling’s side and she’s still breathing, although shallowly. 

“Is this the place?” Ling asks anxiously, his eyes wide. “Can I take her in?”

“Not yet. Wait here until I do a sweep of the house.” She gives him the car keys. “If anything happens to me, hide out in the woods.”

The front door to the house is locked, of course, and Riza slides a pin from her hair and deftly picks the lock. Every nerve in her body is screaming at her not to do this. Charging into an insecure location without backup is one of the stupidest things any soldier can do. But it can’t be helped. She draws her weapon, cocks it, places her finger on the trigger, and enters the house, eyes and ears alert for any sign that she isn’t alone here or that the building has been compromised by an explosive device. 

Riza completes a quick but thorough security sweep, her stomach tied up in knots the entire time. It makes matters worse that most of the house doesn’t seem to have reliable electricity. The dim lights flicker unsteadily, but at least every room is equipped with a gas lamp and matches. Once she’s satisfied that the house is clear, she runs back out to the car. “I’ve opened a storage room. Get that thing in there and lock it up now.”

Ling looks at Lan Fan, torn. “I want to get her inside first.”

“I’ll take care of her.” Riza opens the back passenger door, and carefully lifts the girl into her arms, supporting her with one arm beneath her knees and the other behind her back. Lan Fan’s eyelids flutter as she looks at her, and she whispers something Riza can’t quite hear.

She carries Lan Fan inside and into the bedroom, gently setting her down on the bed. Lan Fan makes a soft sound, a moan of pain, and it tugs at something inside Riza. “It’s all right,” she reassures her. “I’ll be back with you in just a second.”

All of their unit’s safe houses have always had a complete field medicine kit hidden on the premises. After a brief search, Riza finds one inside the closet. Ling enters the room as she pulls a chair from the desk to sit beside Lan Fan’s bed, setting the med kit at the foot of the bed. Ling is panting, clearly worn ragged from adrenaline and exhaustion. “The homunculus is secure.” He wipes his arm across his forehead, sitting on the bed beside Lan Fan.

“Good. Can you watch her for a moment, while I make a call to the Colonel?”

Ling agrees, and Riza finds the phone in the kitchen. She dials the number to Fuery’s second apartment, and her fingers tremble on the dial to the phone. Though they are at the safe house now, and well outside of the city, she can’t relax. She expects to hear the screech of MP sirens at any moment, or see Gluttony emerging from the dark hallway, his eyes gleaming red, his mouth open as he lunges toward Lan Fan or Ling or her.  _ Pick up,  _ she thinks, as the phone starts to ring.

Roy answers before it even completes its first ring. “Hello?” 

His voice is strained, but in the way that indicates tension and not immediate danger. “Cassian,” Riza greets, in the calmest tone she can manage, using one of his several civilian aliases. Their unit has always operated under the assumption that any phone line could be tapped at any time. “I made it to our cabin.”

“I’m glad, sweetheart.” Something in Riza’s chest tightens at that. ( _ Sweetheart  _ is her favorite endearment, what Mother used to call her. When anyone else calls her that, it makes her melt.) “I expected you to call sooner - I was worried that you had run into traffic. Did you have any car trouble on the way?”

“I’m sorry that you were worried, honey.” Riza looks toward the hallway, in the direction of Gluttony’s makeshift prison. She doesn’t hear anything amiss. “I stopped to pick up a few of our friends and bring them over for dinner. I hope you don’t mind.” 

“Not at all.” Roy pauses. “Did you pick up the kids?”

It isn’t the first time they have referred to Edward and Alphonse in this fashion while working undercover. It is always a bittersweet sensation. (Riza has looked at Edward’s blonde hair, his golden eyes, just a few shades lighter than her own, and she has wondered - if she ever had a son, would he resemble Edward, a little?) 

“I wasn’t able to pick them up, no. There wasn’t room in the car.” Riza takes a deep breath. “Come over as soon as you can. And please bring a doctor - one of our friends has taken ill.”

“What?” Roy demands, dropping his cover. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,  _ Cass, _ ” Riza emphasizes his alias, trying to remind him of their cover. “But my friend really isn’t feeling well.”

“I’ll be there soon. I’ll bring the kids too.” 

Roy hangs up before she can ask him whether that’s a good idea. Riza rolls her shoulders once, in a vain attempt to release some of their tension, and washes and dries her hands in the kitchen sink. The water is cold and comes out in irregular spurts; this safe house clearly hasn’t been used in a while. 

She re-enters Lan Fan’s room. Ling had lit the gas lamp, and it throws a dim amber glow around the small space. He sits beside Lan Fan, holding her hand tightly, his expression ashen. Lan Fan gazes up at him through half-closed eyes, as if the sight of him gives her some comfort. Riza shudders to think of how much pain she is in after that self-inflicted amputation. 

“Do you know any field medicine?” she asks Ling, approaching the med kit. 

Ling shakes his head, stricken. “Not really. Not outside of tying a tourniquet or bandaging a wound. Field medicine was Lan Fan and Fu’s job.” 

“I’ll tend to her, then,” Riza assures Ling. Her heart goes out to him. This entire situation is such a haunting parallel of what her own unit has experienced so recently. “But you have to guard Gluttony and the house carefully.”

“I can do that.” Ling releases Lan Fan’s hand with some reluctance, and then stands. “Do you know when the doctor is coming?”

“Soon. The Colonel is bringing him. He might arrive in a black car with the license plate CS15NMT, but he may also arrive in another vehicle. If any other car approaches, it should be driven by a man of medium height, thirty years old, with dark hair and pale skin.” Riza considers it. “He’ll probably be dressed as a civilian, wearing a black overcoat. He’s safe, he’s an ally, but if anyone else comes near the house on foot or by automobile, please hold them off and call me immediately. Do you understand?”

Ling lifts a hand in salute. “Yes, ma’am.” He proceeds to the door, and then pauses, turning back to face her. “May I ask what your name is?”

Riza weighs the risk of telling him her real name, and decides in his favor. After everything she has heard of him from Breda, and everything that she has seen today, she believes that Ling Yao is trustworthy. “Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye.” 

Ling gives her a deep bow. “Thank you for helping Lan Fan and I, Lieutenant Hawkeye.” 

He heads outside, and Riza stares after him. He carries two curved Xingese swords, and he must be extraordinarily competent with the weapons if he had managed to hold Gluttony and another homunculi off for long enough for him and Lan Fan to make their escape. 

“Yes, Lieutenant.” Lan Fan’s voice is weak, and Riza turns to her sharply. She’s struggling to keep her eyes open, but the girl looks intently at her nevertheless. “Thank you for assisting the Young Lord, even though he is not your charge.”

“Of course,” Riza says softly. She has met a few other bodyguards in her time in the military. They have been men, without exception. She never expected to meet another female bodyguard, let alone one roughly a decade younger than her. She joins Lan Fan. “May I inspect your bandages?”

Lan Fan nods, gritting her teeth as if bracing for more pain. Riza studies what remains of the girl’s left arm, and then swallows back a surge of nausea. “I want to clean the area around the bandages and change your bandages, to prevent infection.” She keeps her voice even, not wanting to scare or distress Lan Fan. “I’ll find a fresh top for you to wear too.” The girl’s black armor and top are filthy and blood-soaked.

“Yes, Lieutenant.” Lan Fan grows even paler at the thought.

“Call me Riza, please.” Riza heads into the closet, rifling through the spare military uniforms and undershirts, and random, assorted articles of civilian clothing that Roy had left for the unit’s use. None of it seems easy to put on for somebody heavily injured as Lan Fan. Finally, Riza finds a sleeveless black cardigan that should be easier to get into. 

She brings it back to Lan Fan. “Ready?” she asks.

Lan Fan inclines her head. Riza helps her sit upright, and then eases off the girl’s armor and her top, leaving her in just the bindings that cover her chest. Lan Fan leans against her heavily, her breathing coming in short, shallow pants, but she doesn’t cry out in pain. Riza wraps the cardigan around her. “There.” 

“Thank you.” Lan Fan draws the cardigan close with her right hand. 

“I’ll be right back. I’m going to get some warm water.” 

Riza grabs a pot from the kitchen, and thankfully, the water from the bathtub runs warmer than the water from the kitchen sink. She returns to the bedroom, stopping for just a moment outside of Gluttony’s prison to listen. She hears nothing except his heavy breathing; the sound makes the hair on the back of her arms stand up. 

She returns to her seat by Lan Fan’s bedside, and prepares bandages and gauze from the med kit. Riza closes her eyes for just a second, steeling herself. She retreats further into her stoic shell, her armor, taking great care to reveal nothing of her fright or worry or strain. She has to be strong for Lan Fan and do her best for her, regardless of the fact that she has never tended to a combat injury of this magnitude. 

“Tell me if it hurts too much.” Riza dips the gauze into the warm water. “I’ll stop.”

Slowly, painstakingly, she cleans the area around the amputated limb. Then, marshaling her courage, Riza unwinds Lan Fan’s bandages. The sight of the mangled remains of the girl’s arm takes her back, in one terrible, dizzying moment, to Ishval. To the sight of Ishvalan civilians and Amestrian soldiers alike, their limbs blown off in alchemical explosions and in grenade blasts, moaning and writhing and screaming and dying on the ground.

Riza bites the inside of her cheek hard, forcing herself to return to this moment, to the present. She replaces Lan Fan’s bandage with a fresh one, wrapping it tight. 

It is painful for Lan Fan; Riza has no way to make it less so. Lan Fan whimpers and cries out softly, tears welling up in her eyes, sweat beading on her forehead and dripping down her cheeks. It is heartbreaking to see a child suffer like this. It makes Riza remember the first time she had seen Edward - a small, slumped, figure sitting in a wheelchair too large for him. And the first time she had seen him in the aftermath of a fight gone wrong. His automail arm shattered to pieces, his features twisted in pain and fright. 

She had been in Ishval. She had seen the hundreds, the thousands, of innocent Ishvalan children that had died there. She should know better than to be this naive - but still, more than anything else, Riza wishes that children could be spared the pain, the agony, the suffering, in life. They deserve better. All of them. 

She fights the impulse to wrap her arms around Lan Fan and draw her into a comforting embrace. Briefly, Riza wonders if the girl has family back in Xing - a mother, father, siblings. She seems so devoted to her Young Lord. 

She brushes the sweat-soaked bangs away from Lan Fan’s forehead. “It’s okay,” Riza says softly, trying to soothe her. “I’m done now.”

Lan Fan struggles to open her eyes. Her breathing is still ragged and labored, and she seems dazed. “Thank you. You must think I’m mad, to do what I did.”

“Not at all.” Riza dabs some of the sweat from Lan Fan’s brow with a pad of gauze. “I understand. I’m a bodyguard too, sworn to protect my Colonel. I would have done the same thing as you did, though I would have been so afraid. I admire your bravery.”

Lan Fan gives her a faint smile. “I didn’t feel brave,” she confesses. “When I was waiting in the sewers for the Young Lord to come back for me. I thought I would faint. But he did come back. I knew he would. That’s the kind of person he is.”

Riza is struck speechless at the expression on the girl’s face, at the quiet, steadfast devotion with which she speaks of Ling Yao - but no, she realizes, belatedly. It isn’t just devotion. It is devotion mingled with adoration, with love. And it looks so very familiar.

“Your prince must be very special,” Riza manages to say, at last. “To command such strength of feeling.”

“He is,” Lan Fan acknowledges. A small smile touches her lips, and Riza has the feeling that her professional inhibitions have been lowered by pain and exhaustion. (She knows. She’s been there too, a few times.) 

“Will you tell me what he’s like?” Lan Fan asks.

The question jolts Riza out of her reverie. “Who?”

“Your Young Lord.” Lan Fan sounds drowsy. Her eyelids are starting to droop again. “Your Colonel.”

“Well…” Riza pauses, searching for the right words. She has known her Colonel for fourteen years. She knew him when he was a twenty-three year-old Lieutenant Colonel fresh off the front lines, a Major on the front lines of Ishval, an eighteen-year-old heading off to enlist at the State Military Academy, a sixteen-year-old alchemy apprentice. It hits her with a jolt, for the first time, that she has known Roy longer than she has known anyone else in her life. Roy has been a part of her life for longer than Mother had been. 

“He’s very much like your Young Lord, I think,” Riza tells Lan Fan. She closes her eyes for an instant, and the Roy she’s known for so long appears in her mind’s eye, in all of his iterations. The apprentice, the young soldier and Lieutenant Colonel, the maturing Colonel. “He takes his responsibilities to his friends and subordinates seriously, and he would do anything to protect them. He has great ambitions, but his motivations are pure, and that is why I follow him.”

“I feel the same way.” Lan Fan’s voice is barely audible now. Riza checks her pulse with a finger to her wrist, and is relieved to find that her pulse rate hasn’t dropped. 

“He’s extremely intelligent - although he doesn’t always act like it.” Riza smiles slightly. “He’s an excellent fighter, too. He can be quite fearsome when he wants to be.” (Involuntarily, she hears the  _ snap  _ of Roy’s fingers, sees the explosions in Ishval; sees Lust, screaming, howling, disintegrating under the force of his attacks.) “He’s calculating and strategic most of the time, but he can also be quite bold and reckless.”

“He sounds very talented.” Lan Fan opens her eyes, with effort. “If both of you were in Xing, someone of his talents would be a General, not a Colonel. And you would be a Major, at least.”

“We did actually travel to Xing, once. To the city of Suzhao. We loved our time in your country.” The memory is a fond one, and Riza holds on to it for a moment, treasuring it for the solace it brings her. “That isn’t the whole story about the Colonel, though. He’s pretty young to hold this high of a rank in Amestris. He just turned thirty. He can be mischievous and - and frankly, ridiculous, sometimes. He likes doing impersonations of people who are more important than he is, and he loves going out to eat and drink with his friends, and getting into stupid competitions with them.” 

“He really does sound like the Young Lord,” Lan Fan comments wistfully. It sounds like she’s on the verge of drifting off to sleep again. “It is an honor for us to serve and protect such good men, isn’t it?”

The words fill her with a bittersweet sensation. Riza wonders if Ling Yao will grow to have the same hard edges, the same spells of coldness and darkness, and the same ruthlessness that Roy does. For Lan Fan’s sake, she hopes not. But she has come to suspect that the development of such traits is inevitable in powerful, ambitious men. 

“It is.” Lan Fan’s hair is falling into her eyes again, and Riza smooths it away. 

“Thank you for talking to me, Riza.” Lan Fan brushes the fingers of her right hand against Riza’s coat. “It made me forget the pain, for a little while.”

“You’re welcome.” Riza takes her hand. “The doctor will be here soon. I can stay with you after he arrives, too. Rest, now.”

A frown furrows Lan Fan’s brow. “It feels strange to lie here and leave the Young Lord unguarded.”

“I know.” It’s a little uncanny, to hear thoughts and feelings she’s had so many times expressed by someone else. “But these things can’t be helped sometimes. I’ll look after him, and the Colonel will too, when he arrives. Both of you are under our protection.” 

“Please thank the Colonel for me,” Lan Fan says, trying to draw the covers closer around herself.

“I will.” Riza helps Lan Fan pull the covers around her. “He told me something once, when he was trying to comfort me when I had a very difficult day. It was a Xingese blessing, I think. May your next day be better than this one. I hope that’s true for you and your prince.”

Lan Fan manages the smallest laugh. “It has to be.”

Riza smiles. “I would try to say it to you the way the Colonel said it to me, in your native language, but I’m afraid I’ll butcher the pronunciation.”

“You should try it. You’ll never get better unless you practice.” Lan Fan grimaces, adjusting her position in bed. “My Amestrian used to be awful, but Grandfather made me practice every single day. If we survive this, the Young Lord will certainly invite you and your Colonel to the Imperial Palace in Xing as thanks for all of the help you’ve given us.”

“We did say that we would like to return there someday.” Riza sighs. “I’ll try it.” 

She recites the words, stumbling on the unfamiliar pronunciation. 

Lan Fan stares at her with a look of pure astonishment. 

“What?” Riza asks, remembering her many failed attempts at becoming proficient at Drachman, and her sorry excuses for communication in Cretan when she and Rebecca had traveled to the coast in Creta a few years ago. “Was I that bad?”

“N-no,” Lan Fan stammers. “I didn’t expect that your pronunciation would be so good. You… You must be very important to your Colonel, for him to speak so tenderly to you.”

Lan Fan takes Riza’s hand and squeezes it, and then closes her eyes. She sinks into sleep in less than a minute. Riza checks her pulse one more time, noting that the rate has held steady, which is a good sign. 

She leaves the room, and nearly runs into Ling as he’s walking back from Gluttony’s prison to the front of the house. “I’ve been going back and forth, and everything seems quiet,” he says, forestalling her inquiry. “How is Lan Fan?”

“She’s all right. Her heart rate is holding steady, and she just fell asleep.” Riza looks down the dimly lit hallway, toward the storage room where Gluttony is contained, assessing the situation. It is a bitter pill to swallow that this boy, a decade younger than her, had been more competent against the homunculus than she had. Ling had not just evaded Gluttony, but restrained him. He’s the better pick to watch over him now. “You stand guard over the homunculus, and I’ll keep watch outside. The Colonel and the doctor should be here any moment now.”

Ling salutes her, and then heads back to Gluttony. Riza makes her way outside, holding her weapon at the ready. Her tired eyes take a moment to acclimatize to the darkness. It is surreal that just this morning, she and Roy met with Breda and heard that Marcoh had disappeared, and Roy had discharged himself from the hospital. It feels like an entire week has passed over the span of this one day, and Riza holds her exhaustion and hunger at bay as she patrols the perimeter of the house.

Headlights pierce the dark as soon as she returns to the front of the house. Riza stiffens before she recognizes the car, and the man driving it. Roy’s car screeches to a stop beside the one she had requisitioned earlier in the day. He emerges hastily, slamming the car door behind him. He’s dressed in civilian clothes, and he looks haggard with exhaustion. Today’s events would have been challenging under normal circumstances, and his injuries are still fresh. 

“Lieutenant,” Roy calls, when he sees her. He strides over to her as Edward, Alphonse, and Dr. Knox get out of the car, and rests a hand on her shoulder in greeting. It’s not like him to do that in front of anybody else, and Edward looks between the both of them speculatively. 

Dr. Knox - the man from the hospital lobby, the one who had helped with the Maria Ross case - approaches, carrying his briefcase. “You said there was a patient in need of care?” 

“Yes, Doctor.” Riza steps away from her Colonel hastily, leading Knox into the house and to Lan Fan’s room. 

Lan Fan wakes when she hears their footfalls, and Knox stills when he sees the bandaged stump of her left arm. “What happened here?”

“She and her friend were pursued by our enemies, Lan Fan was injured, and it was necessary for her to amputate her own arm in order to make an escape,” Riza explains, quick and terse. “She hid out in the sewers and fashioned a bandage for her arm. I cleaned it and re-bandaged it a short while ago.” 

“You walked through the sewers after cutting off your own arm?” Knox looks appalled. “That’s a good way to get tetanus.” He unpacks his briefcase with brisk efficiency, revealing a collection of surgical tools. “Bring that lamp closer and hold her shoulder for me, young lady.”

“Yes, sir.” Riza obeys, trying to imbue her grip on Lan Fan’s shoulder with warmth and comfort, as Knox undoes the bandage around her arm. Lan Fan’s gaze flits between him, and the surgical implements, and then to Riza. “It’s going to be all right,” she tells Lan Fan, and there’s a lump in her throat. “You will get through this.” 

Knox begins his work, and Lan Fan starts to scream.

-

Riza loses all track of time as she assists Knox in the procedure. Finally, when it’s over, when Lan Fan’s arm is swathed in fresh bandages, Edward and Alphonse enter the room, followed by Roy. His gaze lingers on her. “Keep watch outside,” he tells her.

Riza nods, grateful for the reprieve. Her nose burns with the scent of antiseptic and blood, and she’s still reeling from the sight of Lan Fan’s arm and the memories it brings back. She strides outside, and the fresh air is a relief. She breathes in, collecting herself, re-centering herself, even as she holds her weapon at the ready. Dealing with homunculi isn’t her strength, and neither is medicine.  _ This  _ is her element; standing guard and being ready to protect.

A strange sound comes from inside the house, then - the terrible cracking and screeching of splintering wood. Riza has heard something like it only once before, four years ago, when she and Breda had run out of a burning building during one of their unit’s operations. She whirls around now, leaping out of the way as something explodes out of the house, leaving a cratered path of destruction in its wake. And the house--

The house, intact a minute ago, is now an almost entirely collapsed shell. “Colonel!” Riza calls, suppressing the panic that rises inside her, the nightmarish vision of Roy lying unconscious or worse, underneath piles of splintered wood. She’ll have to dig him out herself. She’s strong enough to do that, but she doesn’t know if she will be fast enough to free him before he suffocates or succumbs to any injuries he had sustained. 

But then she hears Roy’s voice, although she can’t tell where it’s coming from. “Lieutenant!”

She’s just about to call out to him again when a pit of dread opens up inside her. Riza turns, and she freezes for a moment at the sight before her. 

Gluttony is advancing on her and on the remains of the house. Though he doesn’t resemble the Gluttony she remembers, from her memories and her flashbacks and her nightmares. He towers as tall as a building now, and he looks like nothing human. The space where his body should be, beneath his head - there is nothing but an all-encompassing darkness, and a massive eye peering out from within it. And the teeth - oh, god, the teeth - three feet long and viciously curved, surrounding the darkness on all sides. 

Riza knows it is useless, but she fires at the monster anyway. If she can slow him down, that will be enough. Even buying Roy and the others one minute to try and make their escape will be enough. 

She’s vaguely aware of Roy and Edward, Alphonse, and Knox staggering out of the rubble behind her. “Don’t provoke it, Lieutenant!” Roy orders, pulling himself to his feet. “I’m the one that it wants!”

Gluttony’s gaze fixates on Roy, and a bone-chilling, slavering growl emanates from his throat. “Mustang!”

He lunges straight for Roy, Edward, and Alphonse, bypassing Riza entirely. He is unfazed by the gunshot wounds, not even seeming to feel them, and Riza wants to howl with frustration and fury. (It’s happening again - she is unable to make any difference in this fight.) The three of them flee toward the forest, before splitting up in separate directions, Gluttony charging after them. 

Riza hesitates for a split second, torn, and then sprints after them, following Roy. He’s the one that Gluttony wants, after all. She fires several shots at the homunculus, hitting him every time, blood spurting from the wounds, but he doesn’t even bother to turn and swat her away like one would an annoying fly. Gluttony just barrels deeper into the forest, still growling and panting like a rabid beast. 

She almost misses Roy, huddled behind a tree for shelter as he is. He’s on his knees, crumpled, one hand pressed to the wound in his side, his shoulders heaving. He looks close to passing out. 

“Colonel!” Riza runs to him, slings one of his arms around her shoulders, and helps him to his feet. It is so reminiscent of that night at the Third Laboratory that her mind reels with agony at the memory. 

Roy leans against her heavily. “Transmutation,” he manages to say. “Decoy. Let’s get out of here.”

Riza leads him out of the woods as fast as she can. Edward and Alphonse burst out from the cover of the treeline as she and Roy do, and somewhere behind them, deep in the forest, Gluttony howls with fury. The sound makes her blood run cold. 

“Sounds like it fell for the decoy,” Ed observes, glancing back over his shoulder. 

Alphonse shifts uneasily. “It doesn’t sound happy.” 

Riza grits her teeth and quickens her pace, assisting Roy as she does so. The possibility of Gluttony returning in a berserk rage doesn’t bear considering. The car she had requisitioned earlier in the day lies in a heap of crumpled metal, a casualty of Gluttony’s escape from the safe house. Thankfully, Roy’s car had survived. Knox is in the driver’s seat, Ling getting Lan Fan settled in the back seat. 

“Get in, Lieutenant,” Alphonse urges. “Take care of Lan Fan, too.” 

Edward grabs Roy, shoving him unceremoniously into the passenger seat beside Knox. “You get in too, invalid.” 

Roy curls into himself, clutching the wound at his side, and glares up at Edward. “You expect me to run away and leave this to you, Fullmetal?” he snarls. “You can’t tell me to leave at a time like this!”

Predictably, Edward bristles. “You’ll just be in my way! You’re useless to anyone like this!”

Riza eases Lan Fan into her lap. The girl blinks around, disoriented by all the chaos. “I’m sorry, but I have to agree, sir,” she risks saying. “You’ll be no help in combat, in your current situation.”

Roy slumps back against the seat, looking utterly defeated. “Just go and do your other job,” Edward says, attempting a conciliatory air, which is unusual for him. “The head of the military is a homunculus. You could do something about that.”

Roy reacts as if he had been hit, and Riza goes cold all over at the confirmation of Roy’s suspicion - the suspicion she had been so reluctant to believe. “The head of the military? Fuhrer Bradley?”

Knox growls with frustration. “We can talk about it later! Now, get in!”

Edward, Alphonse, and Ling exchange a significant look that Riza doesn’t like. “The car looks full.” Edward actually smiles. “You go ahead without us.”

“Don’t be a fool!” Knox thunders. 

Riza briefly considers leaving the car and pushing them into the backseat. She weighs the possibility, too, of staying behind, and sending Roy on with Lan Fan and Knox - but no, she can’t leave her Colonel alone and unguarded. It flies in the face of her instincts just as strongly to abandon the Elric brothers for the second time in one day. “You can’t really believe that we would let children fight this battle for us!” 

She forgets that Edward hates being called a child. After what had happened to Lan Fan today - she can’t stand the thought of more wounded children. 

Edward shrugs off their protests. “We still need to get some information out of Gluttony.” He seems so determined, so energetic, despite the prospect of facing that monster with minimal backup. “Besides, the fact that we’re young is irrelevant. We’re the ones that came up with this plan, so we’re the ones that need to clean up this mess. Thanks for all the help today, though.”

Riza can tell that he won’t be dissuaded. Edward is so much like Roy sometimes that it makes her want to tear her hair out. They are both so damnably stubborn, so set in their course once they embark upon it, despite the risk and the danger inherent in the choices they have made. She can protect Roy, at least, but she can’t protect Edward. 

She reloads her handgun in one swift movement, offering it to him grip-first. “Edward, take this with you,” she instructs. “You know how to use it, right?” 

(Of course he does. Riza had taught him herself, at the East City Command practice range a couple of years ago, despite his protests.) 

Alphonse stares at the gun as if it is a viper, coiled and ready to strike. “But that’s a tool for killing people.”

“It’s a tool for protecting yourselves,” Riza says firmly. (Alphonse isn’t wrong. But he and Edward and Ling Yao are vulnerable, surrounded by enemies, hunted like prey, and they need all the protection they can get. She can’t be here to aim and fire to defend them.) 

Edward accepts the weapon wordlessly, such sorrow on his face. Ling approaches the car window, looking in at her and Lan Fan. “Please take care of Lan Fan,” he pleads. 

Lan Fan stirs, forcing her eyes open, and she reaches toward Ling with a shaking hand. “Young Lord--”

An explosion sounds from the woods behind them, much too close for comfort. “Go!” Roy yells. 

“Those three are going to get themselves killed,” Knox sighs. But he speeds off anyway, taking them on the route back to Central. Roy turns to look at her, dark determination dawning in his expression. “Fullmetal and Ling Yao believe that the Fuhrer is a homunculus. But I need to confirm that with my own eyes before we proceed further.”

Knox’s grip on the steering wheel tightens. “So the man who handed down Order 3066 might not be human at all,” he says, in an undertone. “That explains a lot.”

Riza shudders as the horrifying implications begin to sink in. For all these years, all the years since Ishval, she (like everybody else) had thought of the Fuhrer as a person, a person who gave that order - a cruel person, ruthless, misguided, but  _ human  _ nevertheless. Throughout history, humans, leaders, have made terrible, cruel, inhumane decisions. It is disgusting, it is unacceptable, but it is hardly unheard of. The idea of the Fuhrer being one of the hideous, evil monsters like Lust and Gluttony, not a man of flesh and blood at all but an alchemy-created monstrosity, is a thousand times more repulsive. 

Then the rest of the realization hits her, and Riza bites her lip to stifle a cry. 

The Fuhrer and the senior military staff spearheaded the human sacrifice of prisoners like Barry the Chopper to create a Philosopher’s Stone. 

If Order 3066 had been - if the Fuhrer had used Order 3066 as a mass human sacrifice to create another Stone, and used  _ them,  _ used Amestrian soldiers, as a tool to carry out that sacrifice, just as he had used the military researchers--

Riza’s stomach heaves. She nearly vomits. She must have made a sound, because Roy turns to look at her again, and the look on his face tells her that he has had the same realization.

They travel in tense silence for a long while before he speaks again. “If there are other homunculi like him, pretending to be human, living among us…”

Roy trails off, unable to complete the thought. Riza finishes it mentally. It means that their enemies could truly be anywhere. Anyone. 

Knox drives them to his home, not the hospital. “I have enough equipment here to help me take care of her,” he says, as he parks the car. “Better not to risk admitting her at the hospital, considering what you know now.” 

Riza helps him settle Lan Fan in the guest bedroom, Roy following behind her, and Knox immediately gets to work in preparing intravenous fluids. “May I have your card?” she asks him. “So I can call and check on her tomorrow?”

Knox pulls one out from the pocket of his white coat and hands it to her. “Here. I expect she’ll make a decent recovery. Looks like she has nerve sensation, so she’ll be a good candidate for automail.” 

“Fullmetal was talking about getting her set up with his automail mechanic.” Roy looks at Knox. “Do you have a phone I can use?”

Knox tells him it’s in the room down the hall, and after one final look at Lan Fan, Riza accompanies Roy to Knox’ darkened study. Her Colonel picks up the phone and dials a number, and she assumes that he’s calling Breda, to give him an update on the situation. 

Instead, Roy asks for General Raven, and Riza stares, startled. “He isn’t home yet?” Roy asks, drumming his fingers on the desk. “I see. I’ll head straight to Central Command, then. Thank you.”

He hangs up, and turns to her. “Let’s go.”

Riza conceals her surprise at the order. She recognizes Raven’s name as one of the generals that her grandfather had identified as likely to be trustworthy, but surely Roy can’t mean to... “Yes, sir.”

Roy looks in at Knox and Lan Fan on their way out. “We’re heading out now. Thank you for all of your help today. I won’t forget it.”

Knox rises from his spot near Lan Fan’s bedside. He leaves the room, shutting the door so as not to disturb Lan Fan, and stands with them in the hallway. “Where are you headed?”

Roy’s lips curve in something that isn’t quite a smile, and adrenaline glitters in his eyes. “I think now is the time to find out who we can trust and who we can’t.”

“Do you have a death wish?” Knox hisses. “Your wounds haven’t even begun to heal yet, and you’re already going out and looking for more trouble?”

Riza privately agrees with Knox; he has the courage to say what she doesn’t. What she  _ can’t,  _ as Roy is also the Colonel and her commanding officer, and she is bound to follow his orders. Roy’s expression hardens, and at his side, his hands tighten into fists. “For all we know, the Fuhrer is a homunculus. I can’t just ignore that. Besides, we just left children out on the field to do our fighting for us. I need to do my part, now - I can’t just sit here and wait.” 

He storms out without another word, and Riza exchanges a glance with Knox before following. She is sure that the concern that she saw in Knox is echoed in her own demeanor, and she schools her expression back into calm neutrality, trying to figure out how to address this situation before it spirals out of hand. 

“I’ll drive.” Roy’s tone brooks no argument, and Riza now knows better than to disagree with him when he sounds like this. She hands over the keys, and he yanks the door open with an unusually violent tug. (He loves this car. He always lectures Edward about slamming the doors and being mindful not to wrench them open, either.

And it’s a small thing, a tiny thing, but Riza is struck by the fact that he hadn’t opened the passenger-side door for her first. It’s a small thing, a tiny thing, an entirely unnecessary gesture, but he has done it for her for years.)

They get into the car, and Riza looks out the window, wondering what Edward, Alphonse, and Ling’s current status is, and if they are safe. It has been thirty minutes since they left the boys alone to pursue Gluttony. In three years of missions, this is far by the worst situation she has ever left Edward and Alphonse in. Even Roy had commented on it - he had referred to them as  _ children _ , which he normally never does, unless he’s trying to aggravate Edward.  _ He’s not a child, Hawkeye,  _ Roy has told her, so many times over the past years.  _ He’s the Fullmetal Alchemist, and his brother is in an eight-foot-tall suit of armor. They can take care of themselves. _

It was an opinion that Riza had always disagreed with. It had been nice to hear Roy referring to Edward and Alphonse with a little more sensitivity and compassion, for once. 

“What is it?” he asks, startling her out of her thoughts. 

Riza shakes her head. Despite everything, and the danger he is in, she thinks of Edward and smiles. “It’s nothing. I was just imagining the look on Edward’s face if he had heard what you said.”

“I was only repeating what you already said,” Roy replies, a little defensively - the way he always would, when Hughes told him that he could stand to look out for the Elric brothers a little more.  _ I’m their commanding officer, not their father.  _

Riza glances at him out of the corner of her eye. She has to be as neutral as she can, leaving her own judgment and opinion out of the situation for now. “This is unexpected,” she ventures, testing the waters. “Given what we’ve just learned, this is a fairly bold action for you to take, Colonel.” 

“Like hell it is.” Roy glares at the darkened road ahead of him, and Riza can tell that he longs to do even more than what he has planned. He’s wound taut with anger, to the point where he seems ready to proceed straight to the Fuhrer’s residence and attack him directly. “I’m just going to make some preliminary inquiries, nothing more. Besides, Hughes told me that I needed as many allies as I could get. It’s taken long enough for me to start heeding his advice.”

_ Yes,  _ Riza wants to say,  _ but he didn’t know that the homunculi could be walking among us, in the guise of humans. He was an intelligent man. If he did know, he would advise you to stick to allies that you know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, are trustworthy.  _

The imposing figure of Central Command looms in front of them like a monolith. Before Hughes’ murder, and back when she and Rebecca had been cadets at the Academy, Riza used to consider it an innocuous sight, a key figure of Central’s cityscape. Since their reassignment earlier this summer, and their discovery of the conspiracy, the building has taken on a more disquieting air. Roy takes a sharp right turn, driving them deep into a darkened alley, and for a moment, Riza hopes that he has reconsidered his plan. 

She has no such luck. “We should change.” Roy puts the car into park. “We can’t walk around Central Command in civilian clothes.”

“Right.” As a contingency plan, the two of them have always kept several sets of spare civilian clothing and a few spare uniforms for the other at their apartments, and in Roy’s car. He heads to the back compartment of the car to retrieve them, and Riza checks her second handgun, ensuring that it is fully loaded. She steps out, scanning the alley to make sure that it is as deserted as it seems. She hadn’t had a chance to ask Edward and Alphonse what had happened to Scar, and she curses her lack of foresight. He could still be at large, for all she knows. 

Roy has already changed into his uniform pants by the time Riza joins him, and he puts his uniform coat on over his white dress shirt, wincing at how the movement pulls at his injury. He probably doesn’t want to be grilled about his plan any further, but her conscience and instincts prevent her from letting it go just yet. Roy may not appreciate it when she questions him, but she has to. That is her role as his First Lieutenant -  _ not  _ just to blindly obey his orders, regardless of what he may think at the moment. 

“Are you sure that you can trust General Raven?” Riza clips her hair up, and then exchanges her tan coat for her blue uniform coat, fastening it over her black undershirt. 

“Grumman said that Raven was trustworthy, and I’ve never heard anything suspicious about him from Chris or the informants.” Roy sighs, and the exasperation in it sets her nerves on edge. “I’m not going to change my mind about this, Hawkeye. If the Fuhrer is a homunculus, that’s all the more reason we need to gather allies, and act quickly and decisively. Every additional day that Amestris is in the control of one of those abominations is a day too long.”

Roy is right, of course, from a moral standpoint. At the same time, his eagerness gives her pause - and that is something that Riza never expected to feel about him. He has finally found a legitimate reason to overthrow the Fuhrer. Roy’s motivations for supplanting the Fuhrer are good, and they always have been. Reforming Amestris from a military state to a democracy, and seeking justice for the Ishvalans murdered in the Civil War. But stripping the issue of motivations away, the truth remains that Roy is an ambitious man, and for the first time in seven years, he’s suddenly a hair’s breadth away from achieving the ambition he’s held close for so long. 

Roy checks his silver pocket watch, thankfully unaware of her thoughts. Riza can just imagine how he’d react.  _ You think I’m doing this for myself, Hawkeye? You should know me better than that.  _ “Come on,” he says, a bit impatiently. “I don’t want to miss Raven and have him head back home. This can’t wait until morning.”

Riza picks up her folded uniform pants. “I need to finish changing. Please turn around.”

Roy turns red. “Oh. Right.”

He turns, and Riza changes quickly, self-conscious at the fact that she is half-dressed in a dark alley with her commanding officer. If anyone came across them right now, the consequences would be disastrous. Thankfully, they remain undisturbed. “Ready,” she says, closing the back of the car. 

They don’t speak during the remainder of the drive to Central Command. Roy pauses before entering the building, regarding the steep flight of stone steps contemplatively. “These are either the gates to glory, or the entrance to hell,” he muses. Then he turns back to her. “Wait here, Lieutenant. If anything happens to me, then at least you’ll have a chance of getting out alive.”

This is the most unreasonable thing he has suggested all night - walking into a situation rife with unknowns completely alone, without her to protect him. “No, sir,” Riza says flatly.

Roy turns to her, his annoyance clear. “That was an order.”

It’s rare that he pulls this card with her, but Riza holds firm. The last time she had allowed them to be separated, at the Third Laboratory, he had almost lost his life. She won’t make that mistake again. “I can’t obey that order.” 

Roy exhales, short and sharp. “You’re being stubborn.”

He used to tease her for that trait and complain about it, in happier times, and Riza returns his gaze evenly. “That’s something you’ve always known, sir.” 

Roy sighs again, and surprisingly, he gives her a small smile. “Fine. Will you stay here if I promise to come back?” 

Riza has the sinking feeling that he is as dead-set on keeping her out of Central Command as she is on following him in. He is trying to protect her, even though it’s her duty to protect him. Once again, they are at an impasse. 

“Yes,” Riza allows, finally, reluctantly, and she salutes him. “Best of luck, sir.” 

Roy smiles at her once more, and Riza watches as he climbs up the steps into Central Command alone. He enters the front door, and then he is gone. Into the jaws of the lion.

Riza inhales, marshaling her composure, subduing the fear that curls its cold fingers around her wrists, around her neck, trickling her spine. 

She begins her wait.

* * *

_ to be continued _

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope that you enjoyed reading!
> 
> A couple of notes for the end of this chapter--
> 
> Roy and Riza didn't get many scenes alone together this time, but I'll make up for that in the future chapters. :) I really enjoyed writing the scene with Riza and Lan Fan.
> 
> Some people might be disappointed that Lan Fan didn't tell Riza the truth about the meaning behind the Xingese words that Roy spoke to Riza back in chapter seven, when he called her "my heart," when trying to comfort her, but passed it off as him sharing a blessing for her sake instead. Lan Fan knows how sensitive it would be, to be a leader in love with his guard, and she believed it wasn't her secret to tell. 
> 
> I can't help but be amused at the mental image of Roy and Ling commiserating at a "So You've Fallen In Love With Your Bodyguard" self-help session, while Riza and Lan Fan do the same at a self-help session on "Reasons To Not Fall In Love With The Person You Are Sworn to Protect."
> 
> Please check out @5hio on tumblr - she created a beautiful fanart for this story, based on the scene from chapter seven where Roy comforts Riza after the incident at Shou Tucker's home. 
> 
> Additionally, please check out @catjacket-scribbles on tumblr, who created a lovely set of Riza drawings based on Riza's formal outfits in this story, along with a close-up of Riza wearing the jeweled comb Roy gives her in chapter six. 
> 
> I wanted to let you all know that the next chapter may be somewhat delayed. My fiancé and I are getting married on September 26 :) and I expect that we will be extremely busy during the time leading up to the wedding! 
> 
> As always, thank you so much for reading. To all of you who left kudos and comments on the previous chapter, I truly appreciate it. Comments are always treasured; please let me know what you think. 
> 
> I am also on tumblr @lantur if you would like to connect. :)


	11. eleven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Important note: Excerpts of the dialogue and events in this chapter are taken from the manga and Brotherhood; they are not original content.

Riza starts checking her watch after the first hour passes. 

As a sniper, she is normally no stranger to waiting. She has waited for hours upon hours in her sniper towers, in Ishval and now in Central City, waiting for the right moment, the right target, to present itself. Other snipers complained of stomach aches, headaches, restlessness, anxiety, irritability. Riza had almost always been able to maintain her composure during the long stretches of waiting. 

She tries to restrain herself, but it becomes something of a nervous tic, after the first hour. Riza checks her watch again, again, again. Each half an hour seems like thrice that. The second hour passes, and her concerns grow exponentially. For Roy. For Edward, Alphonse, and Ling Yao. Her mind begins to generate horrible worst-case scenarios, quick flashes of images that leave her rooted to the spot in horror and fear. 

Edward and Alphonse, abducted by the homunculi, held in an unknown location somewhere in the bowels of Central City. Ling Yao devoured by Gluttony, without Lan Fan to protect him, leaving the girl alone and heartbroken. Roy slumped in his chair in General Raven’s office, a bullet through his skull, blood pooling on the floor, staining the carpet, splattered on his uniform, the flecks dark against his pale skin. 

Riza’s stomach heaves. She takes one step forward, moving toward the entrance to Central Command on pure instinct. Then she forces herself to stop. Her hands curl into fists at her side, fingernails biting into her palms.  _ Stupid,  _ she chastises herself.  _ Idiot.  _ If Roy, a better fighter than her, one of the most powerful alchemists alive, had been neutralized by their enemies, then she stands no chance.

Roy had wanted her to stay outside. He wanted her to save herself if it came to that, and she has to honor her Colonel’s wishes. With Hughes dead, Roy’s dreams for a reformed Amestris and reparations for Ishval lie only with the two of them. If Roy is dead (and a paroxysm of a shudder shakes her), then he would want her to carry on and make their dreams a reality. 

Riza takes a deep breath. She can’t shake the bone-deep chill that settled over her at the thought of Roy, injured or imprisoned or worse. It goes against every fiber of her being to allow her Colonel to remain in potential danger. It is unconscionable. 

But the fact remains that she can’t charge into Central Command and get herself killed or imprisoned. If General Raven, or Fuhrer Bradley, or anyone else, had done anything to Roy - she has to bide her time and avenge him. (She’ll burn this entire building down to the ground, if she has to.) She can’t fulfill the purpose they both hold so close to their hearts, or seek justice for him, if she is dead too. 

Riza gazes at a lamppost, focusing on it until the agony inside her recedes. She hears Roy’s voice in her mind, remembering the force with which he had reprimanded her at the hospital.  _ You need to learn how to keep it together under pressure. You can’t just shut down, no matter what the circumstances are. As a soldier and as my subordinate, you need to firm up your resolve. _

Riza draws the fragile skeins of her calm around her like a blanket. She will make her Colonel proud, always. She will never let him down again.

-

Riza waits through the rest of the night. Thinking, planning, and in the moments between, grieving. 

It is eight-hundred hours. The unit must be wondering where she and Roy are. (She’ll have to break the news. Riza’s chest aches at the thought.) 

She is startled out of her reverie by the sound of boots pounding on the pavement. Riza turns sharply, startled to see Fuery running down the street toward her, clutching a memo in his hand. “Lieutenant!” he calls.

Riza hasn’t seen him look so distressed since the night that Roy and Havoc ended up in the hospital after the incident at the Third Laboratory. The thought suddenly occurs to her that he could have received bad news about Edward, Alphonse, and Ling.

Something clenches up inside her.  _ Please, no,  _ Riza thinks.  _ Not them, too _ . “What’s wrong, Sergeant?” she asks, trying to keep her tone level. 

Fuery salutes her, out of breath. “I got a memo from the Personnel Bureau as soon as I came in this morning. I’m being transferred to the Southern Command Center.”

The words hit her like a slap, and all the breath leaves her body in a shocked gasp. “They transferred you?” 

(This confirms it. Roy has to have been - neutralized - because he would have never signed off on this.) Southern Command is a hot spot for combat; it’s effectively the front lines of the ongoing conflict along the Amestris and Aerugo border. Most of her fellow snipers in Ishval had come out of Southern Command. The combat fatality rates there are the highest in Amestris. It is  _ not  _ a suitable place for a soldier of Fuery’s age and skill set. 

“I’m not the only one,” Fuery says unhappily. “Everyone got transfer paperwork this morning. Breda’s being sent to Western Command, and Falman’s been reassigned to Fort Briggs.” 

Riza stares, aghast. Fuery to the south, Breda to the west, Falman to the north, Havoc discharged back home to the East, (Roy gone). The unit has been torn asunder. Scattered across Amestris. She is losing all of them, not just Roy. There is a scream building deep down inside her, a scream or a cry or both. 

Even now, in this state, her instincts tell her that she and Fuery aren’t alone any longer. Riza turns to see two staff members that she vaguely recognizes descending down the stairs of Central Command, approaching them. A man with brown hair and a sharp, unpleasant expression, and a taller man with dark hair and glasses. It’s the last thing she wants to do (she wants to draw her guns instead, point the weapons at both of them, and demand to know what they’ve done to her Colonel), but Riza stands at attention and salutes, closely followed by Fuery.

“Lieutenant Hawkeye?” the taller man asks, surveying her coolly.

“Yes, sir.” Riza is mildly, detachedly surprised that her tone remains neutral, revealing nothing of her state of mind. 

He introduces himself as Yakovlev, from Personnel. Riza listens, apprehension continuing to well up inside her. Is she being transferred, too? Perhaps she’ll end up at Southern Command, where she can at least look out for Fuery and plan her next steps. 

“And my name is Storch. I’m the personal assistant to Fuhrer Bradley. This is for you.” Storch hands her a sealed memo, identical to the torn-open one that Fuery is clutching.

Riza wishes she could snap her fingers and incinerate it, like Roy would. Or just grab it and rip it into a hundred little pieces, for what it represents. “Am I being reassigned, sir?”

The words come out edgy and challenging, unlike her. Storch raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t chastise her for her tone. “That’s correct.”

Riza snatches the memo from his hands, trying to hide how hers are trembling. At least she has friends and allies across Amestris, at Eastern Command, Southern Command, Western Command, and Fort Briggs. People who she can confide in about their cause and about the conspiracy her unit had uncovered, in time. People who might be able to help her make the goal of reforming Amestris a reality, and help her find justice for Roy. 

Riza tears open the memo, and blinks down at it. 

The words on the page are not what she had expected. The transfer order indicates that she will continue to serve at Central Command, but that she has a new commanding officer. 

Fuhrer Bradley. They want her to serve as the assistant to Fuhrer Bradley. The man, the monster, who had given the order to slaughter, to  _ sacrifice,  _ the Ishvalans in order to create a Philosopher’s Stone. 

The person who had most likely murdered her Roy. And they want her to work under him.

“What is this?” Riza demands, panic rising inside her. “This can’t be right. Are you sure that these are my orders?”

“Where are they sending you?” Fuery asks, anxiety written clearly on his face. 

Riza recites the lines in front of her, as much for herself as for him, struggling to even form the words. “First Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye is to report for duty at the Central Command Center, as the personal assistant to Fuhrer Bradley.”

Fuery gapes, as Storch and Yakovlev look on impassively. “You have the rest of today to wrap up your work on Colonel Mustang’s unit,” Storch tells her. “Report to Fuhrer Bradley’s office tomorrow at nine-hundred hours. As for you--” He turns to Fuery. “Come with me. All soldiers transferring to Southern Command have to undergo a special series of orientations.”

Fuery has no choice but to follow. His steps are slow and reluctant, and he turns and looks at her over his shoulder, as if wanting desperately to say something. 

Riza watches him go, frozen, still clutching her transfer memo so hard that her fingers hurt. It is as if the Fuhrer had foreseen her moves, like an opponent in a game of chess. By scattering her unit across Amestris, by putting her directly under his thumb, he is making it a hundred times harder for her - for all of them - to do what Roy would have wanted. To expose the conspiracy.

Dizziness creeps in, dark spots at the edges of her vision. How can she work for Bradley, knowing what he most likely did to Roy? The homunculi, Lust and Gluttony, had been immune to gunfire - but would poison slipped into the Fuhrer’s coffee have a different effect? Something that could eat him from the inside out. Corrode him. Burn him.

_ Burn him.  _

Riza imagines the Fuhrer, writhing in flames the way that Roy had immolated Lust. Roy and his flames. The second and last Flame Alchemist, gone decades before his time, just like the first. Tears well up in her eyes, and Riza bites the inside of her cheek to distract herself from the sensation. Now isn’t the time for that.

Footsteps startle her, for the second time that morning. Riza turns, and finds herself peering up (and up, and up) at Major Armstrong. He looks down at her, concerned. “Are you all right, Lieutenant Hawkeye? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

The thought crosses her mind that Major Armstrong is good and solid, one of the few trustworthy figures in Central City. He was an ally to Roy, and now Armstrong can be an ally to her, too. 

“Yes, sir,” Riza manages. “I was just watching the Colonel’s car.” 

(A wave of nausea sweeps over her then. Roy’s car. His books, his clothes, everything that belongs to him-- She’ll have to notify the unit, yes. But worse than that, she’ll have to notify Chris Mustang.)

“Would you please take over for me for just a couple of minutes, Major?” Riza asks. Cold sweat makes her dark undershirt stick to her skin. 

Major Armstrong agrees readily. “Of course, Lieutenant.” 

Riza makes her way to one of the few women’s bathrooms in Central Command, in a daze. While washing her hands, after dry heaving into the sink several times, she stares at herself in the mirror. She had noticed the dark circles underneath Roy’s eyes and his exhausted appearance, of late. She hadn’t noticed that she has dark shadows underneath her eyes to match his. She looks just as pale and unwell, and her hair is limp and flat, her lips slightly chapped. 

Ever since Hughes’ murder - and even before that, truly - ever since things in East City started to turn dark and frightening, with Scar and Nina Tucker - she has been under strain for months. That had been magnified a thousand times with the move to Central, and everything that had come with it. She is closer to breaking than she has been in years. She hasn’t been worn so thin since her return from Ishval. 

She could resign. She could move back to East City, where at least she would have the support of Grumman and Rebecca.

Riza dismisses the fleeting consideration in an instant, hating herself for even contemplating it. She won’t give up like that. She won’t give in. She won’t be cowed into surrender by the Fuhrer and his cronies, no matter what they do to her and her unit. 

Riza looks at herself in the mirror again and then straightens, pushing her shoulders back, holding her head high. They want to see her frightened, distraught, mourning the loss of her Colonel. She refuses to give them that satisfaction.

Riza collects herself on the walk back to the car. She rounds a corner, and to her shock, Roy is right there, leaning against the building, panting for breath as if he had just run a great distance. Major Armstrong is regarding him with surprise, so it’s not like she’s seeing things that aren’t there, either. Roy is really here. In front of her.  _ Alive. _ The urge to throw her arms around his shoulders and kiss him is more powerful than it has ever been, taking her by surprise with its uncharacteristic intensity.

Riza suppresses the wildly unprofessional impulse. “Colonel?” 

Roy looks up at her, his eyes widening. He looks pale and bedraggled, but he doesn’t appear to be injured. “Lieutenant,” he greets, and he looks her over, scanning for any sign of injuries or harm in the same way she had just done to him. 

“I was getting worried.” She doesn’t need to say the rest.  _ I was planning our next steps. I was getting ready to call your aunt and let her know that you were missing.  _

Then Riza remembers that Major Armstrong is still there, looking at them curiously. She snaps into standing at attention, remembering that a good soldier should act more professional with her commanding officer - not fuss over him like a distraught girlfriend. “Um, sorry.” Riza salutes her Colonel, flustered. “Lieutenant Hawkeye, reporting back to post, sir. Major Armstrong happened to stop by, and he was nice enough to watch my post for a few minutes.” She manages a smile. “Thank you for everything, Major. I appreciate it.”

Roy regards her, his attention lingering on the dark shadows underneath her eyes. “You didn’t run off.” He sounds torn between being moved, and the desire to chastise her for not saving herself, as he had ordered her to. 

Riza returns his gaze steadily. “Someone once told me to never give up, no matter what. Once was all I needed.”

Roy runs a hand through his hair, trying to smooth it, and he actually smiles slightly. She never thought she would see that smile again, and the expression is so beautiful, fleeting as it is. “Just don’t tell me later than you wish you had run off while you had the chance.” 

He glances at her over his shoulder as he heads to the car, and Riza is amazed that he can still find it in himself to tease her, after all they have just been through. She smiles, momentarily forgetting the predicament they are in. “It’s too late for regrets.”

“Major, do you have time to join the Lieutenant and I for a short drive?” Roy asks, carefully casual. “I just had an important meeting that I would like to discuss with you.”

Armstrong looks a little nonplussed by the request. “Of course.” 

He gets into the back seat, squeezing himself in with almost as much difficulty as Alphonse does. Roy joins her up front, taking the passenger seat. They exchange a look. In unspoken mutual agreement, Riza drives the car to a deserted side street several blocks from Central Command, parking it in the shadow of several much taller buildings.

Roy turns to face Armstrong. “Major, what I’m about to say to you will sound bizarre.”

Riza listens as Roy tells Armstrong everything. He begins with Edward and Alphonse’s trip to Central in early summer, and Hughes’ murder just a couple of weeks later. He shares everything that their unit learned from Barry the Chopper, after their reassignment to Central. The existence of the homunculi, and the truth behind how the Philosopher’s Stones were created. Roy tells Armstrong about what really happened at the Third Laboratory, with Gluttony and Lust, and the entire aftermath of that operation. How Edward, Alphonse, and Ling Yao had worked to capture Gluttony, while Ling and Lan Fan faced off against Fuhrer Bradley and learned that he was something less than human. 

“Fuhrer Bradley is a homunculus?” Armstrong cuts in, his voice rising in alarm. 

“I confirmed it myself. I saw it with my own eyes.” Roy stares straight ahead, the expression on his face strangely blank. Riza wonders what he had seen. Gluttony’s true form had been monstrous, as had Lust’s long, dagger-like claws that had so easily torn Barry to shreds, and impaled Havoc and Roy. What had Fuhrer Bradley transformed into? If he had been anything like Lust and Gluttony, his demonic brethren, it would have been terrifying. And Roy had been forced to witness it alone.

Armstrong hunches over in sorrow, his shoulders trembling. “It can’t be. So many soldiers have put their trust in the military, in this country, and this is the truth behind all of it?” 

“You could resign, Major.” Roy crosses his arms over his chest, without looking back at Armstrong. “With your disposition, I’m afraid you’ll suffer if you don’t.”

Riza remembers Major Armstrong’s breakdown in Ishval. His refusal to obey orders. He had been dismissed from the front lines in disgrace; only his family’s wealth and influence saved him from being shot for insubordination on the spot, or dishonorably discharged and court-martialed upon his return to Central Command. Armstrong has paid the price in other ways, though. Rumor has it that he will never be promoted beyond the rank of Major. 

Armstrong shifts uneasily. “In Ishval, I chose to flee the front lines and merely return to Central, when I should have taken a stronger stand against the military’s actions. That decision has haunted me every day since then.” His voice is thick with fury and barely repressed emotion. “It made me sick, how I abandoned my beliefs. And now that I know what is really behind the military, behind this country, I have to fight. I won’t be able to live with myself if I run away again.” 

Riza knows a moment of relief. At least they will have one trustworthy ally outside of their unit. Still, she’s at a loss - a haunting, inescapable sense of loss. The unit, Roy’s greatest strength, has been disbanded and scattered. He is alone, and the Fuhrer could decide to have him eliminated at any moment. She still can’t understand why Bradley had kept him alive in the first place. But maybe it is a good thing that she can’t understand the inner workings of the mind of a monster. “How do you plan on handling all of this, Colonel?” she asks. 

Roy looks out of the passenger side window, propping his head up in one hand. He should be exhausted, after spending the entire night awake and the entire previous day working their field operation, but his eyes are alert and focused. Riza can practically see him processing information, calculating his next steps. “The Fuhrer asked me that too. I told him that I wasn’t going to give up my ambitions of supplanting him.”

Riza gasps, taken aback by the recklessness of it. To make that assertion to the Fuhrer’s face was a precipitous move, even for Roy and the way that he’s been acting lately. In the backseat behind her, Major Armstrong’s jaw drops. 

“The Fuhrer seemed eager to reveal his true nature to me,” Roy muses. “It’s like he wanted me to know that there’s someone even more powerful than him pulling the strings. Someone who’s giving him orders.” He interlaces his fingers, and then sighs. “He’s testing me.”

It’s shocking how well he’s taken this in stride, and it makes Riza wary. “You seem surprisingly calm.” 

“I don’t know.” Roy smiles, but the expression is hollow, somehow. Bitter. “It’s just… It’s similar to how I felt when I fought Lust. I’ve been called a human weapon and a monster, and maybe I deserve that. But I never feel more human than when I have a real monster to fight.”

The words rub Riza the wrong way; unsettle her in a way that she can’t put her finger on. Over the nine years she has spent in the military, she has heard so many other soldiers express similar sentiments. Especially her fellow snipers. It has always made her uneasy. But it hurts, in a sharp, visceral way, to hear Roy say such things. 

_ What about our nights out with the unit?  _ she wants to ask him.  _ Laughing, drinking, and playing cutthroat - didn’t you feel human then? Or during all the times we would walk over to the Sweet Spring for lobster rolls, back in East City? When we would drive back home from dinner at Grumman’s, and stand outside my apartment, talking until almost midnight? When you would call me after your dates with your informants, just to talk? Didn’t that make you feel truly human? _

Roy checks the clock in the car. “Sorry for keeping you so long, Major. We can drive you back.”

Armstrong shakes his head. “No, thank you. I’ll walk. I need to clear my head.” He pauses. “Thank you for confiding in me, Colonel Mustang, Lieutenant Hawkeye. I’ll do whatever I can to help your cause. You can always count on me.”

He leaves, shutting the car door with surprising gentleness from a man of his stature. The two of them sit in silence for a few moments, watching him depart in the rearview mirror. “That went well,” Roy sighs. 

Riza remains quiet. To her surprise, anger unfurls inside her, like a beast awakening, stretching its wings. If Roy had just thought of confiding in Major Armstrong first - if he had listened to her advice the previous night and not gone to Central Command to speak to General Raven at all - they wouldn’t be in this terrible predicament. The unit has been dissolved, her  _ family  _ will be separated to the four corners of Amestris, and she and Roy have been separated from one another as well. They are in a precarious position, and it is entirely his fault. His rash actions had put them in this position, and put them all at risk. 

Riza swallows her anger down, attempting to smooth it over, soothe it into submission. It isn’t remotely constructive for her to feel or react this way. What is done is done. There is nothing to be gained by anger now, or by saying  _ I told you so.  _

Beside her, Roy stares down at his hands. “You’ve been assigned to work as the Fuhrer’s assistant,” he says quietly. “You’ll be with him every minute of every day. Constantly under his surveillance.”

Under different circumstances, Riza would have found a way to brush his concern off, to assure him that she would find a way to use her closeness to the Fuhrer to work to further their goals. But right now, she is tired, and angry, and worried, and hurt. “Yes, sir,” she acknowledges, as evenly as she can. 

Roy rests the heel of his hand against his forehead. “I’ve been a fool,” he mutters. “He knew that the best way to get to me was by using you. Everyone can see what you mean to me.”

The words strike an exquisitely painful chord. Even though things have been strained between them lately, she is still his best and closest friend and ally. (And for half a decade now, she has wanted to be even more than that.) “I’m sorry, sir,” Riza apologizes, subdued. “I never wanted to be a weakness that could be exploited to harm you.”

“Don’t apologize to me, Lieutenant. I’m the one who should be apologizing to you. My obvious attachment to you has put you in danger. I’ve compromised you with my…” Roy gestures vaguely between them. Then he drops his hand, defeated. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have kept you so close to me for all of these years. I should have let you serve on Major Armstrong’s unit when he put in a request for you, or under Major General Armstrong or Lieutenant Colonel Reid when they did. We could have found a way to work together toward our shared goal, even at a distance. But I wanted to keep you by my side, and that compromised you. You would have been safer with anyone else.”

Riza stiffens in response to the unusual outburst. “Colonel,” she says carefully, after taking a couple of beats of silence to gather her composure. “I would rather have been by your side for all these years, no matter what lies ahead, than safe with anyone else.”

God help her, it’s the truth. Roy turns to her, an unreadable expression crossing his face.

“Besides, this may not be all bad,” she placates. “I can use my proximity to the Fuhrer to subtly gather information for you.” 

“No,” Roy replies. “No, you will not put yourself at risk by doing that.” He glares at her. “In fact, you’re still my subordinate, and I order you not to do that. All I want from you is to keep your head down, be careful, and stay safe. I was the one who made a mess of things, so I’ll be the one to fix them.”

Riza tenses up at the vehemence of the order, and then exhales. “Yes, sir.”

Roy rubs his temples. “I’m sorry, Hawkeye,” he says, at last. “You warned me against this course of action, and I disregarded your advice. When we get through this, when I have you as my subordinate again--” He breaks off for a moment. “I won’t be so dismissive in the future.”

Riza inclines her head, accepting the apology with grace. “Thank you, sir.” She tries not to wonder when that will be - when she can be her Colonel’s Lieutenant again; when they will get through this. Will it be months? Years? 

“You waited for me all night.” Roy looks at her out of the corner of his eye. “You must be hungry. We didn’t have lunch or dinner yesterday.”

Riza presses a hand to her stomach, which has ached from hunger since the previous evening. She hasn’t eaten in a little more than twenty-four hours. She feels dizzy and weak, on top of the mental and emotional fatigue. “I’ll be fine. I need to get back to the office and address all of our transfer-related work.” She almost chokes on the words. “And I need to check in on Black Hayate. I’ll walk over there on my lunch break later.” Fuery would have walked him and fed him last night, as he always does when she and Roy are out on a mission together, but she isn’t sure whether Fuery had stopped in this morning.

“You need to eat something first. I’m getting you breakfast.”

Riza protests, but Roy ignores her, exiting the car, walking around to the driver’s seat, and gesturing for her to move. She slides over wearily, fighting the urge to rest her head against the window and close her eyes for just a moment. 

Roy drives them to a café near the river. It’s the same spot the two of them used to come to while visiting Central Command for temporary assignments, back in happier times. Riza sinks down on a small bench outside of the café, facing the river, while he goes inside to order. It’s a crisp early autumn day. The leaves are starting to change color, tinges of yellow creeping into green, and the air is cool and brisk. The day has a brightness, cheer, and energy that is completely at odds with her utter depletion.

Roy emerges from the café, carrying a brown bag that he hands to her, along with a large to-go cup of jasmine tea. “I got you a bagel sandwich with cream cheese, egg, and avocado, and a pumpkin muffin, and some fruit.”

Riza barely manages to thank him before wolfing down her food. She isn’t normally so indecorous, but she can’t even remember the last time she had been starving like this. Roy sits at her side, eating his own bagel sandwich at a considerably more measured pace, which is unusual for him. 

The grief returns with a vengeance, at the realization that this will be the last breakfast they share for the foreseeable future. (Besides Black Hayate, who is her breakfast partner on the weekends, Roy is her regular partner for breakfasts - and lunches, and dinners.) They won’t have breakfasts together in Roy’s office anymore, or quick bites of toast or bagels, eaten as they make their way to a morning meeting. It’s Fuhrer Bradley that she will spend her mornings with now, as well as the rest of her days. 

“What is it?” Roy asks, around a gulp of coffee, drunk from an even larger cup than hers.

_ I’ll miss you,  _ Riza almost says. Despite everything that she has felt ever since Hughes’ murder and even since Roy and Havoc’s hospitalization - the frustration, anger, concern, worry; the growing sense that something is somehow  _ off  _ about the Roy she knows and loves… Despite all of that, the previous night had forced her to confront, again, the idea that she might have lost him. That had helped her realize that she still loves him, just as powerfully as she ever has. 

“Nothing,” Riza says, instead. “I’ve just been worried about Edward, Alphonse, and Ling.” 

They finish eating and return to the car, Roy filling her in on how Edward and Alphonse had safely returned to Central, though Ling Yao’s whereabouts are still unknown. Riza frowns, noticing that Roy makes an incorrect turn on Market Street. “Colonel, you’ll need to turn around. You should have turned right on Market to get back to Central Command.”

“We’re not going to Central Command.” Roy comes to a stop at the stoplight, scowling at the driver behind them, who had apparently stopped too close to his car for comfort. “I’m taking you home to get some rest.”

“That’s not necessary, sir,” Riza argues. “I have to report to the Fuhrer’s office tomorrow. I need to get my work on our unit wrapped up immediately, and do everything necessary to prepare you to handle the rest of the unit’s work on your own--”

Roy cuts her off. “This isn’t up for discussion, Lieutenant. You were up all night. You’re not working today. I’ll have Fuery, Breda, or Falman bring some of your paperwork over to your apartment later this afternoon if you insist on it, but you need to get some rest.”

“Sir--”

Roy turns on the radio and turns the volume up, drowning her out. Riza glares at him. “Very mature, Colonel.”

Roy keeps driving, unfazed. He takes her home, and parks the car behind her apartment. “I’ll walk you up,” he says, like he’s afraid she’s going to start walking straight back to Central Command if he doesn’t see her secured in her apartment. 

Riza doesn’t dignify that with a response. Her muscles ache with fatigue as they climb the stairs. The doormat outside of her apartment is slightly askew, Fuery’s subtle way of signaling that he had been here to take care of Black Hayate the previous night. She hears the dog’s small, excited bark from the other side of the door, and suddenly, it’s like she can’t open it fast enough. 

As soon as the door swings open, Black Hayate pounces forward and wags his tail frantically, sniffing at her legs. His pure joy and enthusiasm to see her is so touching. In Riza’s weakened state, she almost sniffles, as she sinks to her knees and hugs her dog close. (Black Hayate is the one thing that nobody,  _ nobody,  _ can take away from her.) “It’s all right, Hayate. I’m home now. We’ll go for a walk in just a minute.”

Black Hayate nuzzles against her face, his nose cold against her flushed cheek. She hears movement above her, and Riza looks up, surprised to see that Roy has taken Hayate’s lead from where it hangs, on the hook by the door. “I’ll walk him. Go to bed.”

“Are you sure?” Black Hayate squirms away from her and prances at Roy’s feet, the little traitor. Riza still can’t help but smile at him. “Maybe you shouldn’t be seen walking my dog.”

Roy laughs, a short, harsh sound. “We’ve already faced our consequences. The Fuhrer is very well aware of what you are to me.”

“All right,” Riza replies uncertainly. She pats Black Hayate on the head, and he licks her hand. “Be good for the Colonel, all right?” 

Riza fastens the lead on Black Hayate, seeing how Roy fumbles with it. When the two of them leave, Roy taking her apartment keys, she stares after them, feeling off balance, somehow. Fuery has taken care of Black Hayate for her dozens of times, but this is different. 

She heads to the bathroom, pulling off her clothes, pulling her hair free from her clip. The warm water from the shower soothes her sore muscles and throbbing feet. Riza rests her forehead against the damp tiles, closing her eyes. Visions of the past day flash before her. Edward and Alphonse’s fight with Scar, rescuing Ling and Lan Fan, nursing Lan Fan’s wound at the safe house, Gluttony’s attack-- She’ll have to call Dr. Knox later too, to check on Lan Fan, and she’ll have to get in touch with Edward and Alphonse to ask about where Ling Yao is. She knows that Lan Fan will ask about him first. 

Riza dresses in her pajamas, her movements somewhat numb and clumsy, and sits on her bed, pulling the blankets over her lap. As exhausted as she is, her mind races, unable to stop fretting.  _ What will it be like to work for Fuhrer Bradley, knowing what I know about him? I’ll have to revise our unit’s communication codes and review it with them either tonight or tomorrow morning, so we can communicate safely with one another on the phone or in letters. _

Speaking of communication - Riza had seen the red message light blinking on her phone. Rebecca must have called. With everything that has happened lately, she hasn’t talked to her best friend in more than two weeks, and she and Grumman must both be worried. 

The sound of the front door opening and closing shatters the quiet in the apartment. Riza instinctively lunges for the gun on her bedside table, imagining Fuhrer Bradley or one of the other homunculi, one of the three she hasn’t seen yet, entering her apartment. 

Instead, Black Hayate comes trotting in, panting happily. He jumps up on her bed without being asked, and curls up next to her. Riza’s shoulders slump with the immediate release of tension. She releases her grip on her weapon, setting it back down on the nightstand, and strokes her dog’s soft fur. “Did you have a good walk, Hayate?” 

This time, when she hears footsteps in the hallway, Riza knows what to expect. Roy follows Black Hayate, hesitating somewhat awkwardly at the entrance to her bedroom. “You’re not asleep,” he points out, sounding mildly displeased. 

Riza shakes her head. After another moment of hesitation, Roy steps inside. He looks a little out of place in the small space. He hasn’t been in her room since the night that he burned her back, in East City. (Regardless of the hundreds of times she’s fantasized about him being in her bedroom with her.) 

It isn’t decent to think about those moments now. “Thank you for walking Black Hayate.” Riza scratches her dog behind the ear in an attempt to distract herself. “Did he behave?”

“Perfectly. You’ve trained him well.” Roy sits down on the edge of the bed, next to her. She hadn’t expected him to do that. “I know you have a lot on your mind. But try and get some rest.”

As weary as she is, rest seems impossible to attain. Riza nods anyway, dutiful as ever, and Roy looks at her with such intensity that she is momentarily self-conscious. (Overly aware that she’s in her pajamas, and the top she wears to sleep in is one of the few white button-downs he had left at her apartment years ago, in case of an emergency. She hopes he doesn’t recognize it, and wishes she had thought to wear something underneath it, at the same time.) 

“I’m going to make this right, Hawkeye,” Roy vows. “I know what they mean to you. I’ll make everything right for you, I promise. I’ll get our unit back together when I’m Fuhrer, when I’ve gotten rid of Bradley. I’ll create an administrative role for Havoc, too.” He attempts a smile. “I’ll drag him out of his family’s store in Womiob, if necessary. And you’ll be my Lieutenant again.”

Riza is unprepared for the emotions that sweep over her at his words, at the deathly seriousness with which he speaks them, low and rough. She nods once, wordlessly.

“If you still trust me to do so,” Roy adds, his voice barely audible. 

For the first time, Riza wonders if her Colonel has noticed the reservations she has quietly carried with her through the summer. The reservations about him, and his behavior, ever since they have moved to Central, ever since Hughes’ murder, culminating in his tremendous misstep last night and the dire consequences. 

They are overdue for a long, honest conversation. Over the past several weeks, there has been one thing or another obstructing that from happening. Lack of time, or Roy pushing her away - and yes, her own wariness at bringing it up; her own trepidation of the consequences of doing so. But now, Riza looks him in the eye, and she can’t make herself say something now, either. She can see how badly he needs her to say  _ yes,  _ she still trusts him. 

“Yes,” Riza says, and she hopes that he won’t notice that it took her a moment too long to respond. 

Earlier, Roy said that he had compromised her, with his attachment to her. But she’s been compromised for years before that, with her own feelings for him, and Roy has been just as compromised by Hughes’ murder.

What a mess this has become. The love that they have for one another (Roy’s love for Hughes, Roy’s love for her, her own more-than-platonic love for him) has become a weakness. Something that is tearing them apart; something that has been used against them.  _ But what is life without love?  _ Riza thinks, her throat growing tight.  _ It’s cold, and it’s meaningless.  _

She is so distracted by her own thoughts that she doesn’t notice Roy move until he draws her into his arms, holding her close. Riza goes rigid for a moment, startled, before she leans into him, letting him stroke her back. All of the emotion of the past several days, ever since the incident at the Third Laboratory, crashes into her at once. She had thought she lost her Colonel, not once, but twice. She had thought she lost Havoc. She had been consumed with worry for Edward and Alphonse, for Lan Fan and Ling. And now she has been separated from her unit, forced to work for the Fuhrer, the creature responsible for an untold number of atrocities.

Riza crumples, leaning her forehead against Roy’s shoulder. Every nerve and fiber of her body aches with how much she longs to come apart and cry, and let herself be soothed and comforted, the way he had done for her on the afternoon when they had learned what happened to Nina Tucker. 

But Riza remembers Roy’s orders to her when he had been in the hospital.  _ You need to learn how to keep it together under pressure. You can’t just shut down, no matter what the circumstances are. As a soldier and as my subordinate, you need to firm up your resolve. _

Riza exhales, and locks away her pain and her grief somewhere deep inside her. (The same place she has locked away so many, many memories, of Father and Ishval and the things she did after Ishval.) This isn’t the time for mourning and for pain. She has to be brave. She has to be a soldier. She has to be strong for the fight ahead. She has to be strong for her Colonel, for Roy, too. The news of the unit’s separation must be as shattering for him as it is for her. 

But then Roy’s hands brush against her hair, a light caress, and Riza melts against him. She’s taken completely off guard by the desire that lances through her at being held like this. She hasn’t felt this, for Roy or for anyone else, in a long time. She’s been too wrapped up in everything else that has been happening. His proximity, his touch, brings it all back.

Everything hurts, inside. Everything is raw and painful, and she just wants to be held and comforted.  _ It would be so easy,  _ Riza reflects. It would be so easy to turn her head to the side and kiss his neck, or move her hands, stroking them down his shoulders and arms, or his chest. It’s exactly what she had done with Reid and Bresler, when they had held her in an attempt to comfort her, giving them permission to do more. 

It would be so easy. There have been countless moments with Roy, over the years, where it would have been so easy to make her feelings, her desire, for him clear. Riza had always abstained. She loved him and respected him far too much to put him in the uncomfortable position of having to turn down her advances.

She had always assumed that Roy would turn her down. That he didn’t reciprocate her interest.

Now she isn’t so sure of that. 

The craving, the hunger, for touch and for comfort, that had driven her into Reid and Bresler’s arms, and the arms of so many other men, surges within her just as intensely as it ever had. (Like the past five years of good behavior, of healthier ways to cope, hadn’t existed at all.) Riza quells that desire, forcing it back and down, where it belongs.  _ I am not that woman anymore,  _ she tells herself fiercely, even as her grip on the back of Roy’s uniform coat tightens.

Riza takes a deep breath, and pulls back. Roy lets her go, with some reluctance. “You should go back to the office,” she tells him. “Please tell Breda, Falman, and Fuery that I said--”

Her voice catches in her throat. 

“I will.” Roy looks like he’s on the verge of placing his hand on hers. He smooths a wrinkle from the blankets instead. “I’ll tell them to come into the office early tomorrow morning, before you report for duty with the Fuhrer, so you can say goodbye. For now.”

Riza can’t bear to think of that now. “Thank you, sir.”

“You’re welcome. Now, go to sleep.” 

Roy leaves, with one look back at her over his shoulder.

When she hears the apartment door close and Roy’s spare key turn in the lock, Riza sinks down into bed. She holds her arms out to Black Hayate, and her dog obediently moves closer, nestling against her side. Riza rests her hand on his flank, finding solace in his soft breathing, and the feeling of his fur against her palm. (She hasn’t brushed him in days. She will do that this evening.) 

Riza closes her eyes. As enervated as she is, her mind still won’t slow. She should have asked her Colonel to get in touch with Edward and Alphonse to make inquiries about Ling, but she had been distracted by unprofessional matters. It had been foolish of her. She tries to distract herself now, with thoughts of all the work that needs to be done. It’s no use. She keeps returning to the odd sense of certainty she had felt while Roy was holding her. The sensation that maybe he wouldn’t turn her down, if she made her feelings for him clear.

Memories drift to the surface, unbidden, with every breath. 

Sitting in her grandfather’s study after dinner.  _ I doubt the Colonel would be interested in traveling to Xing with me.  _ And Grumman regarding her with polite doubt -  _ I’m not sure that’s true, my dear.  _

_ You can’t seriously think he doesn’t want you.  _ Rebecca, over dinner at her apartment, back in East City.

_ I don’t know.  _ Riza sighed, setting her fork down.  _ I can understand how other people might assume that he does. But I know Roy. He loves all of us, and Hughes too. I won’t be so arrogant as to assume that he cares for me in a different way than he cares for any of them. _

Rebecca raised an eyebrow.  _ He’s devoted one Saturday night a month, for years, to hanging out with you and your grandfather. I’ve had boyfriends who refused to do as much for me.  _

Havoc, at the Molten Rose in East City, on a night out with the unit, all of them slightly drunk.  _ When are you going to start paying for my dinners and drinks, Colonel?  _ He grasped at his chest, affecting a wounded demeanor.  _ And opening doors for me? I always have to get them myself.  _

_ Once you start being as competent and as valuable to this unit as Hawkeye,  _ Roy glared, while Breda snickered into his drink and Falman and Fuery exchanged smiles.  _ So, never.  _

The delicate, jeweled hair comb, carefully nestled in a box, a gift given after their trip to Xing.  _ The amber suits your eyes,  _ Roy commented casually, the first time Riza had worn it. 

The night of their first dinner with Grumman. Riza still remembers how she had been nearly paralyzed with nervousness, hands smoothing against the lilac chiffon skirt of her new dress.  _ You look lovely,  _ Roy told her, and she had dismissed it as something anyone on the unit would have said to her. 

The evening in late September, that first year on the unit, when it was unseasonably cold and the heater in the office was broken again, and she was sitting at her desk, fighting back her shivers as she tried to work. Out of nowhere, she felt something warm and heavy drop down onto her shoulders. Riza had turned to see Roy walking back to his office, his dark overcoat draped over her back. 

(He gave her his coat a dozen times after that, on cold days or rainy days, until he finally ordered one for her as an end-of-year gift.) 

The immediacy with which Roy had corrected her assumption, made in her first year on the unit, that Vanessa was his girlfriend.  _ This stays between us. I haven’t told the others on the unit yet. It’s something I’ve always been in the habit of keeping to myself. Vanessa isn’t my girlfriend - she’s one of my informants.  _

There has been a particularly acute shift between them in the last months, as well. Starting with that awful day they had discovered what Shou Tucker had done to Nina. Roy had held her then, trying to soothe her anguish; brushed her tears away from her face with the pads of his thumbs. Weeks later, on the night they had learned of Hughes’ murder, he had hugged her tight, buried his face in her hair, and she had felt the tears dripping into her locks.

Roy had sought her embrace in the hospital, in the aftermath of what happened to Havoc, and again, just now. They have touched more in the past few months then they have in years of working together. These haven’t been casual touches, either. They have been long embraces. Roy has held her tight, held her close, rubbed her back, brushed his hands against her hair. Riza has seen him trade embraces with Hughes before, and as earnest as the affection had been, it had looked nothing like what he’s done for her. The only other men who have held her, caressed her, like that - she had ended up in bed with them shortly afterward.

Riza shifts in bed.  _ As of tomorrow, he won’t be your commanding officer,  _ a small voice whispers, from the back of her mind.  _ Not anymore. You can do whatever you want with him, without breaking your promise to never get involved with any of your commanding officers again. _

Riza rakes her fingers through her hair angrily, brutally dismissing the thoughts. Now isn’t the time for this. Not with everything else going on. And especially not with Roy being - the way he’s been, lately. 

There had been a time, not so long ago, she had adored and trusted him completely and unreservedly. Things are different now, more complicated and more tangled and darker, somehow. Sleeping with him, even just confessing her feelings for him, will make everything worse. It is her duty to be her Colonel’s moral compass, his guiding light, when his own aren’t as trustworthy as they should be. She is already enmeshed with Roy to a dangerous degree, thanks to her feelings for him. She will be even less capable of being objective if she is his lover as well as his Lieutenant. 

Riza presses her hand to her chest, absentmindedly massaging the skin above her heart. She knows that her reasoning is sound, but it still hurts. It’s still unendingly frustrating, to know that she could have him now, she could have him  _ tonight,  _ if she wants, but she  _ can’t.  _ It is even worse than the belief she had carried for years; that she couldn’t have Roy because he didn’t return her interest. 

(Perhaps he does have more than platonic feelings for her. Riza still wonders how deep those feelings go. Because the truth is, on the rare occasions that she allows herself to fantasize about a happier future, Riza imagines living in a modest gray stone house on the outskirts of the city, with brightly flowering wooden boxes outside of each window and an enormous maple tree in the front yard. She imagines herself waking up next to Roy every morning and going to sleep beside him every night. She imagines both of them cooking dinner together in the evenings, and then sitting on the sofa with a book and reading to their daughter. She wants it so much it leaves her breathless. She loves him. She loves him so much that it’s unbearable, sometimes. She wonders if Roy loves her like that, or if he just wants her in the same way that so many other men have wanted her, or if whatever he feels for her is in some middle ground between the two.) 

Riza pulls the spare pillow over her head, and finally falls into a troubled sleep. 

-

Riza awakens four hours later. She immediately puts Roy out of her mind, and then pets Black Hayate, who is still resting next to her. She rises, goes to the kitchen to get a glass of water, and then pads over to the living room. She has work to do.

The red message light is still blinking on her phone. She doesn’t normally call Rebecca at work, but Riza dials her best friend’s work line, long since memorized, anyway. She will have to speak carefully in order to avoid revealing too much, in case her apartment line has been wiretapped, but she knows that Rebecca will understand. 

Rebecca picks up on the fourth ring. “You’ve reached the office of Lieutenant General Grumman. Second Lieutenant Catalina speaking.”

It’s such a relief to hear her voice. Riza can’t help but smile. “Hello, Second Lieutenant. Sorry to call you at work.”

Rebecca makes a strangled sound, something between a laugh and a cry. “Hawkeye, I was just about to buy a train ticket to Central and come over to check on you.”

It would be wonderful to see Rebecca, but Riza realizes suddenly that she doesn’t want Rebecca within a hundred kilometers of Central. Their enemies had murdered Roy’s best friend. She’ll be damned if they try to harm hers, too. “Don’t bother,” Riza says, as lightly as she can. “The Lieutenant General would be lost without you.” 

Rebecca scoffs. “Grumman wanted to come down there himself. He hasn’t heard from Mustang in days, and when he learned I hadn’t heard from you, either…” She trails off, and then continues in an undertone. “He got off the phone with Mustang just a little while ago.” 

“Ah.” Riza directs a cautious glance at her front door, and then steps away from it, stretching the cord of the phone nearly to its limit. “How much do you know?”

“Mustang and Havoc were injured in a field operation, and Havoc was hurt badly enough that he got medically discharged.” Rebecca’s voice gets very quiet, and Riza closes her eyes briefly. She knows about Rebecca’s feelings for Havoc, even though her friend refuses to admit them. “Mustang told Grumman that the Fuhrer wasn’t happy with the findings of his latest operation, and that his unit has been dissolved, effective immediately. He said that all of you have been given transfer orders...and that you’re working for the Fuhrer now. Riza, are you all right?”

The question nearly breaks her. She hasn’t been  _ all right  _ in a long time.

“It’s an adjustment, but I’ll get by,” Riza responds, in her calmest, bravest tone. She knows that Rebecca will be able to see right through it. Still, she can’t take the risk of revealing her true feelings, in case her apartment line is under surveillance. “Don’t be concerned about me.” 

“How can I not - sorry, hang on, I need to put you on hold. Grumman’s calling me.” Rebecca disappears for a minute, before returning, sounding slightly harried. “He wants me to transfer you over to his line.”

“All right.” Riza glances at the door again, taking another small step away from it. This is highly irregular. She and Grumman don’t communicate on the phone. It’s too risky. Ever since she had moved to Central, the two of them have communicated only via heavily coded letters. It’s been a while since her last letter to him - before the Maria Ross incident, now that she thinks about it.

Rebecca completes the transfer, and Grumman picks up his line. “Riza,” he says.

He hadn’t addressed her by her rank, which raises even more red flags. Riza frowns. “Lieutenant General Grumman, sir.” She hopes that her formal address will remind him of their need for discretion. “I hope you are well.”

“We’re all fine here.” Grumman’s voice is strained. She can imagine him fidgeting with the trinkets on his desk, something he does when he is nervous. “Mustang told me what happened.”

“Rebecca mentioned,” Riza says softly. “It is a setback, sir, but everything will be all right.”

Grumman is silent for a few moments. “You should know--” he starts. Then he clears his throat. “Take a dishonorable discharge - it’s all right - and move back to East City. I’m here for you, as is Catalina. We can find you an excellent position as a civilian. It’s not too late for veterinary school, either.”

Riza leans back against the wall, wondering how much Roy had told her grandfather. His worry is evident. She thinks back to Grumman’s warning before she had left for Central.  _ I’ll be honest with you, my dear - I don’t like this, and I considered refusing to sign off on your transfer. Mustang won’t hesitate to burn it all down. Such is the rash impulsiveness of youth. Make sure you don’t get caught in the flames.  _

Riza refuses, firmly but gently. “I can’t, sir. I can’t leave the Colonel.”

Grumman sighs, and she can hear his heart breaking in the soft release of breath. On that night, their final dinner in East City, Grumman had pointed out a striking parallel between her and her mother. Her mother, too, had been in love with a brilliant alchemist with great ambitions. (The first Flame Alchemist. He had been consumed by his ambition, and it had destroyed him.) Cintra had ignored Grumman’s warnings about Berthold, and eloped with him.  _ I considered refusing to sign off on your transfer, but I didn’t want history to repeat itself.  _

“Be careful,” Grumman says, at last. “Remember, you can change your mind at any time.”

Riza wipes her eyes. “Thank you, sir.”

Grumman transfers her back to Rebecca, who answers the phone, sounding subdued. “Hey, Riza.”

“What was that?” Riza paces in a small, tight circle. “He was too obvious.”

“That cat’s out of the bag. He called Fuhrer Bradley as soon as Mustang broke the news.” 

Riza nearly drops her glass of water. “What?”

“Yeah.” She hears the shuffling of paper, and knows that Rebecca is holding a folder in front of her face, obscuring her lips to anyone else in her office who might be trying to listen in on the whispered conversation. “He congratulated the Fuhrer on his new assistant, and talked about how you’re his only grandchild, his pride and joy, and how much he treasures you. He was full-on gushing.”

Riza’s first instinct is to demand that Rebecca put Grumman back on the line. They have spent half a decade taking great care not to reveal the truth of their familial connection to a single soul outside of her unit. She hadn’t wanted anyone to think that she was using her relationship with Grumman for the advancement of her own career. (And she hadn’t wanted anyone to start asking questions about her connection to Roy, considering that Grumman is his mentor, and she is his assistant.) 

Then Riza relents, realizing the implicit meaning, the subtle threat, behind Grumman’s words to the Fuhrer. His intentions had been good. 

“You’re not alone,” Rebecca murmurs. “We’ve got your back.” 

“Thank you,” Riza says, with feeling. “I have to go. I have some other calls to make. I’ll call you this weekend, if you’re free on Saturday night.”

“Definitely,” Rebecca agrees. “And come visit, if you can.”

Riza smiles faintly. She has the suspicion that if she sets foot back in East City, Grumman and Rebecca will conspire to prevent her from returning to Central at all costs, perhaps by locking her up in Grumman’s wine cellar. “Sure. And Rebecca?”

“Hmm?” 

Riza winds the cord of the phone around her finger. This isn’t something she has said out loud to anybody besides Black Hayate ever since Mother died. It makes her nervous to contemplate it. But it badly needs to be said, now more than ever. (Every few days, she thinks of Roy’s last goodbye to Hughes, and how the two of them had no idea that this one, out of hundreds of goodbyes, would be their final one.) “I love you.”

There is a short silence on the other end of the line, one that tells her Rebecca is struggling to keep her composure. “I love you too.”

They hang up. Riza takes a sip of her water, checks the time, and makes the first of the four calls she has left. 

-

Riza wakes up early on her first day under Fuhrer Bradley’s command. It isn’t intentional. Her eyes snap open at six-hundred hours, and she isn’t able to get back to sleep. Her muscles are taut with nerves, her stomach unsettled enough that she can’t bring herself to eat more than two slices of plain buttered toast for breakfast. 

She showers and dresses mechanically, precisely. (Riza hasn’t dressed for the first day on a new job in six years. Going through the motions this morning sends her back to being fresh out of the Academy, newly graduated, readying herself for her very first day at her new post at East City Command. She had been so young. Still raw and bleeding, reeling, from after Ishval, with no idea of what the coming years in East City would bring her.) 

Riza looks at herself in the mirror as she brushes out her hair and secures it in her clip. She is a First Lieutenant, and she is twenty-six years old. Struggles aside, she has come a long way from the young new graduate she was back then. She can rise to meet the challenge ahead of her now, just as she has met every other challenge she has faced.

Black Hayate accompanies her to Central Command today. He won’t be able to come with her when she reports to the Fuhrer’s office at nine-hundred hours, but he will want to say goodbye to the rest of the unit.  _ Goodbye for now,  _ Riza reminds herself. Especially Fuery - Black Hayate truly loves Fuery, and vice versa. Hayate can stay with Roy until she collects him after work. It will be good for her Colonel to have company. It’s unsettling for her to imagine the rest of the unit packing up and moving out of the office, leaving him serving alone for the first time in years. Breda, Havoc, and Falman have been with Roy even longer than she has. 

Riza finds her unit in the office unusually early, all of them save for Roy busily packing their things into boxes. (Her Colonel, she notices with a pang, is clearing out Havoc’s desk, his face a carefully impassive mask.) Breda, Fuery, and Falman all greet her when she enters, and there is something sympathetic in their demeanors. If the sympathy had come from anyone else, she would have been embarrassed, but not from them. They know her well. They know that out of all of them, she alone has no siblings, no parents; no family outside of the unit, Rebecca, and Grumman. Riza has never told them so in as many words, but they understand how they have filled that void for her. 

She can’t dwell on it now. Riza approaches Falman. “I heard you’re heading to Fort Briggs tomorrow.”

“Yes, Lieutenant.” Falman looks down at his feet glumly. “I hate the cold.”

Riza’s heart goes out to him. Falman had confided in her once that it wasn’t always easy for him to make friends, not until he had joined this unit and gained some confidence. He must feel apprehensive about joining the ranks of the close-knit soldiers at Fort Briggs. “Still, you’ll have one of the best commanding officers in the military, outside of our Colonel. Major General Armstrong is an excellent leader, and I know that she’ll respect the talent that you bring to her forces.” 

“I hope so. Her adjutant, Major Miles, seems fair and decent as well.” Falman glances between her and Roy. “I assure you that I will be a credit to you, the Colonel, and this unit.”

“I know you will, Falman.” Riza hands him a paper bag from the bookstore - the same one she had visited on Roy’s birthday, to buy him his book of poems. “I can’t do anything about the cold up north, but here’s something for you to read on the train.”

Falman brightens, noting that the title is the latest volume in the long-running series following the adventures of Detective Cora Majeski. It is a series both of them have enjoyed since the early days of their time in East City. “This is excellent! I have been meaning to read this for a while - thank you, Hawkeye.”

Riza smiles, and extends her hand to him. He takes it, and holds it firmly. Even this is different from the Falman she had first met seven years ago, with the timid handshake so at odds with his height. “Let me know how it is. Stay in touch, and stay warm.”

Falman gives her a crisp salute. “Yes, Lieutenant! You as well.” 

Riza finds Breda next. He is gathering his things into a box, frowning, his preoccupation evident. “Are you all right?” she asks quietly.

Breda shrugs one shoulder. “The bastards knew what they were doing,” he replies, matching her tone. “They placed me in Western Command, clear on the other side of the damn country from Havoc. It’ll take two days of travel for me to get to him in Womiob, if I have to.” 

“I’ll be closer than that, and Rebecca and Grumman even more so. We’ll watch out for him,” Riza promises. 

“Thanks.” Breda gives her one of those keen looks that always makes her feel like he’s reading her mind. “You watch out for yourself, too. You’re in the riskiest position of all of us, being that close to the Fuhrer. Don’t do anything stupid trying to gather information that would help the Colonel or any of us. We can all take care of ourselves.” 

“The Colonel gave me the same speech yesterday,” Riza points out, with a small smile. She knows that Roy believes (believed) that Havoc had the most potential and interest for advancement to the highest ranks of the military, but she’s always thought that Breda and Roy have more similarities than either of them have noticed. “And, for the record, I would never do anything stupid.” 

Breda laughs. She can’t compare to his record with Havoc, but still, the two of them have gotten themselves into a few scrapes in field operations over the years, much to Havoc’s envy, and their Colonel’s vexation. “Sure.”

“Brigadier General Julian Hall oversees West City Command - please give him my best regards.”

Breda leans against his desk. “So you know him, then? What kind of guy is he?”

Riza nods. “He was the commanding officer for my sniper team when I was in Ishval. He’s a good man.” 

“That’s a small comfort, at least,” Breda says, somewhat grimly. “It feels good to know I won’t have to serve under an idiot, a nutjob, or an ego-crazed moron.” 

“Don’t get too comfortable in West City, though.” Riza glances at Roy. “We’ll want you back in Central, as soon as we can manage it.” 

“A pack of wild dogs couldn’t keep me away,” Breda vows. He salutes her. “Take care, Hawkeye.”

“You too, Breda.” 

Despite the circumstances, Riza feels a flicker of amusement at watching Black Hayate help Fuery pack. Fuery had lifted him onto his desk, and her pup picks up communication equipment and manila folders with polite restraint, dropping them into the box that Fuery placed on his office chair. Fuery praises him liberally, and Black Hayate wags his tail hard. “Who’s the smartest boy?” he asks, taking a break from packing to scratch the dog behind the ear. “You are!”

“He’s going to miss you." Riza joins the two of them. “As much as the rest of us will.”

“I’ll miss you guys too.” Fuery pushes his glasses up on his nose, and looks up at her, sadness brimming in his dark eyes. Riza is struck with the desire to hug him. Fuery is competent in the field, yes, and brave, but he’s also the youngest of them and the least experienced; the least equipped to be sent to the front lines of the conflict between Aerugo and Amestris. More soldiers have been killed or left disabled in those ongoing border conflicts than any other of their country’s many, many wars. 

“When you get to Southern Command, you’ll be assigned to the unit of Lieutenant Colonel James Reid,” Riza tells him. “He’ll keep you out of direct combat as much as he can without raising suspicion from the other commanding officers or his own superiors.” 

“How did you make that happen?” Roy joins them, evidently taking a break from packing up Havoc’s things. “I didn’t know you had connections with the personnel department at Southern Command.” 

“I don’t. I called Lieutenant Colonel Reid directly and asked him to put in a special request for Master Sergeant Fuery. We served in Ishval together, so he was happy to help.” Riza keeps her gaze trained on Black Hayate on Fuery’s desk, suddenly unable to make eye contact with her Colonel. ( _ We served in Ishval together, we flagrantly disregarded the anti-fraternization regulations and the code of conduct on the front lines, and we’ve doubled down on our past errors by sleeping together whenever work puts either one of us in the same city. So I called in a favor. _ And there’s a sinking sensation inside her, a small voice telling her,  _ if Roy knew about your past-- _ ) 

“That’s nice,” Roy replies, and Riza wonders if she’s imagining the undertone of jealousy there. 

“Thank you for looking out for me, Lieutenant Hawkeye.” Fuery smiles, and stands up a little straighter. “But I’ll be able to handle myself on the front lines. I’ve learned from you and Second Lieutenant Havoc, after all.” 

“Very true, Master Sergeant. And I’ll trust Black Hayate to your capable hands today, since I won’t be able to take him into the Fuhrer’s office with me.” 

Fuery’s smile fades. “Yes, Lieutenant. And - can I call you this weekend, just to check in? I’ll use a pay phone, an alias, and the unit’s code, so if the Fuhrer has your apartment wire-tapped, he won’t punish you for communicating with me.”

“You can always call me,” Riza says, at once. 

“Thank you.” Fuery salutes her. “Until next time, Lieutenant.”

“Until next time, Master Sergeant. Stay with Fuery and the Colonel, Black Hayate,” Riza instructs her dog. “I’ll be back to get you this evening.”

Black Hayate barks once in assent. Riza looks up at the clock, and a cold finger of dread runs down her spine at the realization that she has a mere thirty minutes before she’s supposed to report to the Fuhrer’s office. Roy eyes the clock, too. “I’d like a moment alone with you, Lieutenant.”

“Yes, sir.” 

Their unit’s office in East City came with a separate suite for Roy himself; their smaller office in Central offers no such privacy. Roy glares around the room as if silently resenting the lack of additional space, before leading her to the window. He folds his arms behind his back, staring out at the city, and Riza stands by his side. 

There’s a lump in her throat. She wishes he hadn’t asked her for this. They had avoided each other this morning simply because the thought of saying goodbye, even  _ for now,  _ was too jarring and upsetting. Even if not for the love she has for him, and whatever feelings he has for her - they have worked so closely together for so long that the new reality of spending their days apart from each other is utterly foreign.  _ The one land I don’t want to travel,  _ Riza thinks.

Roy remains silent for several moments. He bows his head, and Riza can see the worry and the anger playing out on his face. “Remember my orders, Lieutenant. I need you to be careful.”

“Yes, Colonel,” Riza acknowledges, just as quietly as he had spoken. 

Roy looks at her out of the corner of his eye. “I’m not going to have any of your things sent over to the Fuhrer’s office. That should give you an excuse to come back here over the next few weeks in order to collect them.” 

The perfect excuse for them to check in on one another. Riza inclines her head. “Yes, Colonel.”

“I’m not your commanding officer anymore. But you can always come to me if you need help. If he sets a foot out of line, or if he threatens you in any way.” There’s a quiet menace in Roy’s voice, one that she’s been hearing more and more often, lately - often enough that it doesn’t take her by surprise anymore. “I’m always here for you, Hawkeye.” 

Riza fights the instinct to place her hand on his arm. “I know that.” (She also knows that even if the Fuhrer threatens her in any way, Roy and Grumman are the last people she will tell. At least distance separates Grumman and his forces in East City from Central. Roy is likely to storm directly into the Fuhrer’s office and attempt to assassinate him in clear view of all of his guards, regardless of the consequences of such an act.) 

“Good.” Roy clears his throat. “Thank you for being at my side for all of these years.”

The simple sentence encompasses so much. Every field mission where she’s kept Roy alive. Every late-night talk about the future of Amestris and of Ishval. Every impromptu planning session for their future maneuvers in Roy’s office or his car. Every evening working together over takeout. Every meeting across Amestris that they have ever attended together, her sitting at his side and dutifully taking notes, and reviewing action items with him when they returned to the office. Every train trip they took through the Eastern area of Amestris, Riza trying to get her paperwork done while Roy distracted her with conversation. 

Riza blinks back her tears. “I look forward to the day I can return.” 

“As do I.” They’re standing close enough that their arms and shoulders almost brush. Roy moves like he’s about to put a hand on her shoulder, and then seems to think better of it, clenching his right hand into a fist. “Can I walk you to the Fuhrer’s office?”

_ Yes,  _ Riza wants to say. She wants to take in every last moment that she can with him. “That’s not necessary, sir,” she declines, instead. “I would rather not project an image of weakness.”

Roy actually smiles. “No one in their right mind would ever look at you and call you weak.”

Riza holds the words close. “Thank you, sir.”

She leaves the office, with one final look over her shoulder. She stops at one of the women’s bathrooms, which is thankfully empty, and takes several deep breaths. (It occurs to Riza that she misses Maria Ross. Ross had been the only other female soldier at Central Command that she was friendly with. Ross was competent, gentle, kind, and reliable, all traits that Riza values. But at least Ross is safe, far away from Central, just like Rebecca.) 

Riza makes her way to the Fuhrer’s office, her back straight, head held high, ignoring the curious, speculative glances that the other soldiers she passes, male and female alike, send her way. (She expects that the news of the sudden dissolution of the Flame Alchemist’s unit has spread, and the rumor mill is turning. It is strange to walk down the halls of Central without anyone in the unit at her side, or without Roy two steps ahead of her. She’s so used to watching his back, here and everywhere else, that even her eyes miss the sight of his back and shoulders. She’d be able to recognize him from any distance, even a thousand paces.) 

The guards standing on either side of the Fuhrer’s door regard her with faint contempt. (Riza isn’t unaware, either, of what most people at Central think of her. Her reputation in East City, Fort Briggs, and Western and Southern Command, where her friends and allies are stationed, is unimpeachable - she is the Hawk’s Eye, the decorated veteran of Ishval, fierce and fearsome. At Central, though, most people see her as nothing more than Mustang’s loyal dog _,_ or his mistress, or both, and she loathes it.) 

Riza salutes the guards, resenting the gesture. “First Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye, reporting for duty as the new assistant to Fuhrer Bradley.” 

One of the guards opens the door for her, without a word of greeting in response. (Riza had expected that her days moving forward would be cold like this, without the warmth and conversation that have always marked her time with her unit. She told herself that this would be fine. She isn’t here to make friends, or even allies. Nobody close to the Fuhrer can be trusted.)

Riza enters the large office, and the guard closes the door behind her. Leaving her alone with the Fuhrer, sitting at his desk, reading through his paperwork, seemingly taking no notice whatsoever of her. She discreetly scans the space as a matter of habit as she approaches his desk, taking in the large collection of swords mounted on the wall at the Fuhrer’s right side, and the enormous window behind him. The window will serve as an emergency exit point, if necessary. 

Riza stands at attention in front of the Fuhrer’s desk and salutes him. “Fuhrer Bradley, sir. First Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye, reporting for duty.”

Bradley finally looks up from his paperwork. He does the last thing she had expected, and gives her the charming smile she has seen on his face at every military occasion. It makes Riza’s skin crawl. She nearly takes a step back. She has hated him ever since Ishval for formulating and signing off on Order 3066, but for the first time, she wonders whether her long-standing distaste for the Fuhrer is born out of something even deeper; the same sense of fear and foreboding that had saved her from Gluttony’s attempted ambush in her sniper tower. “Good morning, Lieutenant. At ease.”

Riza lowers her arm, but she doesn’t relax, not even a fraction of an inch. Bradley sighs. “You know,” he points out mildly, “I’m not going to kill you where you stand.”

She hadn’t expected him to be so blunt. Riza’s eyes widen before she smooths the surprise from her expression. 

“I was tempted, though, after Lieutenant General Grumman’s little display on the phone yesterday.” Bradley folds his arms in front of him. “He all but threatened to march his entire force of soldiers to Central and burn it to the ground if I harmed one hair on your precious head. He had no idea that the kind of bloodshed that would entail would serve my purposes quite well, of course.”

Riza stares at him incredulously. He’s talking about the lives of hundreds of soldiers. The upper ranks of the military may be rife with corruption, but the rank and file soldiers of Central Command know nothing of the truth.  _ Monster,  _ she thinks, and her fingers nearly ache with how much she longs to draw her weapon and put a bullet through his skull. 

Then she realizes that this is exactly the response he wants. The Fuhrer  _ wants  _ to toy with her. Riza exhales, and ensures that her expression remains as neutral as a blank sheet of paper. She will give him nothing. “Of course, sir,” she echoes evenly. 

Bradley blinks. Perhaps he hadn’t expected that. A tiny thrill rises inside her. “I’m glad you see that we don’t have to make this difficult, Lieutenant,” he says, finally. “Actually, I might have use for someone with your many talents.”

_ I would rather die a thousand times over.  _ Riza bites the response back _.  _ “That’s flattering, sir. I respectfully decline.”

Bradley’s one visible eye narrows slightly. “You’re quite the loyal dog, to stand by your master even though he’s on the losing side.”

“Yes,” Riza replies, before she can think better of speaking so defiantly, and for the first time, she doesn’t bristle at the insult. There are worse things than being loyal and steady. Much worse things. “I am.”

Bradley gives her a long look. “Storch is waiting in the antechamber. He’ll give you an orientation to your new role. You’re dismissed.”

Riza feels his gaze boring into her back as she leaves, and she realizes that her jaw is clenched tight. She enters the antechamber, and finds Storch sorting through piles of the Fuhrer’s paperwork. 

“Captain Storch,” Riza says, and she refuses to think of her Colonel sitting at his desk in the days to come, working through his paperwork alone. “I’m ready to begin my work.”

* * *

_to be continued_

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :)
> 
> As always, thank you so much to everybody who left comments and kudos on the previous chapter - and even more than that, thank you to all of you who left your sweet wishes for the wedding. My husband (!!!) and I got married two Saturdays ago, and it was a beautiful and perfect memory I'll treasure forever.
> 
> I didn't expect for Riza to realize that Roy had feelings for her in this chapter. That wasn't supposed to happen until after the Promised Day. But it just kind of...happened. Roy has been going through a lot, and tbh, he's never exactly been subtle about his feelings for Riza; she's just been oblivious. He's grown more and more obvious about it in the previous chapters, and even more so this chapter. He had a really grueling night, in the aftermath of another really grueling experience in the aftermath of the Third Laboratory. Riza's been oblivious, but she's not stupid, and she finally put two and two together. 
> 
> Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it! I'd love to know what you thought; comments are always treasured. 
> 
> I am also on tumblr @lantur if you would like to connect. :)


	12. twelve

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Important note: Excerpts of the dialogue and events in this chapter are taken from the manga and Brotherhood; they are not original content.

Riza expected her life to change once she began her new assignment on Fuhrer Bradley’s staff. She expected things to be difficult.

She hadn’t realized just how difficult they would be. 

On the surface level, there is the learning curve that comes with all new assignments. Roy is the only commanding officer that Riza has worked under in an administrative capacity. She took her position on his staff two months before she turned nineteen. Roy, as a twenty-three-year-old Lieutenant Colonel, taught her everything she knew about how to be an assistant. Over the years, she learned and grew alongside him as both of them gained professional experience.

Riza learned everything she knew - how to take detailed notes during meetings, how to correspond and coordinate work with other units, how to delegate and handle work within her own unit, how to categorize and order paperwork and files, and so many other tasks - based on a system that worked for her and Roy. They built their system from the ground up in the first two months after Riza became his assistant. 

There was no system before Riza. No process. The unit, when it had been composed only of Roy, Havoc, Breda, and Falman, operated in a state of chaos and disorganization. She and Roy worked late almost every night, as a young Lieutenant Colonel and an even younger Second Lieutenant, defining and refining the workflow of their unit. They turned it into a well-oiled machine; one of the most successful and productive units at East City Command. 

Riza learned Roy’s quirks, too. He needed his most important meetings scheduled either in the late morning, before lunch, or between fifteen-thirty to seventeen-thirty hours. Early morning wouldn’t do, as he was almost always late for work. The afternoon wouldn’t do either, as he would be sleepy after lunch and often took an impromptu nap at his desk. 

Roy liked her to take notes during his meetings, and to sit with him afterward to help him come up with lists of action items for the unit to work on. When time allowed, they would have pre-meeting briefings as well, where they would come up with lists of points Roy wanted to address during the meeting. 

He liked coffee at fourteen-hundred hours or fifteen-hundred hours in the afternoon, if he was awake. He wasn’t picky about milk or cream being added, as long as it had a lot of sugar (enough to make Riza wince.) Roy didn’t like the radio being on during working hours, claiming it was distracting, but he didn’t mind it at all when the unit chattered freely. He would often chime in on their conversations, calling his comments from across the room.  _ You should be more assertive with that troublesome neighbor of yours, Falman. Fuery, the Hilltop Cafe is better than Milio’s. Breda - for twenty-one across, fill in “honed.” Havoc, you should be doing a close-grip bench press if you really want to hit your triceps. That’ll work them more than bench dips.  _

_ (Did not ask,  _ Havoc would mutter, every time Roy made an unsolicited weightlifting suggestion, but he scribbled Roy’s recommendations down on a scrap piece of paper nevertheless.)

The truth of the situation with the Fuhrer aside, Riza finds it difficult to adapt to a new workspace for the first time in her adult life. The operation of Bradley’s office and staff is a hundred times more complex than any work she has handled before, and Riza scrambles to orient herself to dozens of new people and their roles. The meetings that fill Bradley’s days are more high-level and complex than any she has sat in on before. Under different circumstances, she would have found all of them interesting.

Riza stands behind Bradley, taking notes, and she consoles herself by thinking that this is practice for what she can do for her Colonel when he becomes Fuhrer. This will prepare her to serve him better. It is a small comfort, one that she holds closely.

All of that stress, all of that difficulty, is without even taking into consideration the truth of what Bradley really is. Without even taking into consideration the revolting knowledge that everybody in his inner circle, all of the upper echelons of the military, knows the truth. They are all complicit. They may be more human than Bradley, but that is in name only. Deep, profound loathing roils within Riza whenever she finds herself in the same room as them, forced to stand at attention and salute them, when all she wants is to draw her guns and empty her clips into their heads. (Fuhrer Bradley can’t die. But they can.) 

When Riza finds herself near the Fuhrer, even when he is in the next room over from her as she works in the antechamber to his office - it’s like being back in combat, on the front lines. She is hyper-aware of every movement and every sound that Bradley makes. She keeps herself under strict guard, careful to reveal nothing but the utmost calm and professionalism at all times, intent on showing no fear when she is around him. 

Bradley asks her to make tea for him every morning at eight-hundred hours and every afternoon at fifteen-hundred hours. Riza prepares the tea, and does not allow her hands to tremble when she offers him the cup. 

She spends most of her days in silence, now. The Fuhrer’s guards and other staff regard her with open distrust and contempt, speaking to her only when absolutely necessary, shirking even the basic courtesies required by virtue of her rank. Riza makes her way through the Fuhrer’s expansive office suite, working through her tasks for the day, and she feels like a ghost, sometimes. Unseen. Unseen by everyone except  _ him.  _

Riza delivers armfuls of paperwork to the Fuhrer several times throughout the day, every day. Her insides constrict with apprehension every time she approaches his desk. Bradley makes a point to look at her every time, to make deliberate eye contact. To smile and thank her, as if he knows how hard she is working to suppress her hatred and fear. 

The Fuhrer works hard, unceasingly, his dark head bent over his work, with the kind of single-minded focus that Riza has only seen from two people in her life. Roy, when the mood takes him, and Father. 

Seeing the Fuhrer at his large, imposing wooden desk reminds her so strangely and powerfully of Father, always behind his desk, scribbling away at his research. Riza returns to her own desk, afterward, and takes a moment to gather her composure.  _ Forgive me,  _ she thinks, to her father’s memory, staring down at her paperwork with unseeing eyes. As much as she had feared her father, as much as he had broken her heart a thousand different times, as much as she had hated him, even, as an adult - her father was never, ever as evil as Fuhrer Bradley. Her father would have found Bradley as loathsome as she does. 

It is like she has been reduced to a child again, going about her days in lonely silence. Riza desperately misses a hundred little things about her unit. The sound of static coming from Fuery’s desk as he tinkered with his communications equipment, Breda and Havoc’s banter, Falman humming to himself, Roy’s - everything about him, really. There is a palpable chill in the air in Bradley’s office that contrasts so deeply to what she had felt while serving alongside her unit, and Riza never, ever relaxes.

It is always a relief to come home to her apartment and to Black Hayate. She relishes the simple, comforting routine of walking Black Hayate at the park across from her apartment, feeding him dinner, and preparing her own, more than she ever has. 

After dinner, Riza sits at the kitchen table, writing her monthly article for  _ Guns & Ammo  _ magazine. She’s been a contributor for over a year now, and the editors have all mentioned that her articles have been very well received. It’s a small thing, but Riza is proud of it nevertheless.

She finishes her article for November, a piece detailing life at a veterans’ home in Central City, and sets it aside. She can proofread it tomorrow and send it off to the editors on the weekend. Satisfied with her work, Riza goes to take a warm shower. As they always do, her thoughts wander to how Roy and the rest of the unit are doing. She’d heard from Fuery, Falman, and Breda the previous weekend. They seem to be settling in as well as possible, under the circumstances. She had visited Havoc in the hospital a few days ago, and he’s making good progress with his physical therapy.  _ They put me in this warm water pool every day and lead me through a bunch of exercises,  _ he explained.  _ It’s supposed to help with my strength and balance. It’s based on some new research from South City’s university, apparently. And at least I can still do upper body exercises with dumbbells.  _

Black Hayate’s barking startles Riza out of her reverie. It’s unlike him to bark like this, and Riza frowns. “Hold on, Black Hayate,” she calls. She gets out of the shower, quickly drying herself off and pulling on her pajamas - soft dark blue pants, gray slippers, and one of Roy’s shirts. The air is cool outside of the steam that built up in the bathroom, and Riza grabs her pink sweater, draping it over herself. 

There is only one person who would visit her at this hour, and her heart leaps at the thought of seeing Roy again. Riza opens the door, and Black Hayate launches himself forward, tail wagging. 

He promptly knocks Edward to the ground. Black Hayate plants all four paws on Edward’s chest and then turns back to look at her. He barks, as if to say  _ This isn’t who I was expecting, either.  _

“Sorry, Edward.” Riza tries to recover from her surprise at seeing him. “Bad dog, Hayate. Let him up.”

“No problem.” Edward sits up, rubbing his head, a rueful expression on his face. “It happens all the time.”

Riza offers him a hand, pulling him to his feet. “Come in. I’ll make you some tea.”

Edward glances around her apartment as he enters, regarding the boxes piled up in the living room with mingled curiosity and worry. “You’re not moving, are you?”

“I’m not.” Riza is momentarily grateful for that. She’d be completely incapable of protecting and looking out for Roy if she were posted to another city. She would be even more useless than she is now. “I just haven’t had the time to unpack since we moved to Central.”

“The Colonel told me that you’ve been assigned to work as the Fuhrer’s personal assistant,” Edward says tentatively, leaning against the wall. “Is that true?”

Riza goes to the kitchen, fills a pot of water to heat for the tea, and pulls out a box of blueberry herbal tea from one of the cabinets. “Yes,” she replies, her tone measured. She doesn’t want him worrying about her. “I heard about your situation too, and about Winry.”

Edward’s face falls. “Yeah.”

She asks after Alphonse and Ling Yao as the water comes to a boil and she prepares the tea, before leading them to the small dining table near the window. “Thanks,” Edward says. He takes a sip of his tea, and then sets the mug down on the table abruptly, as if remembering something. He rummages in the pocket of his red coat, and then pulls out the gun she had lent him the previous week. “I wanted to bring this back to you. I’m sorry for how it looks - I didn’t know how to clean it.”

The gun is in a state, positively covered in dried blood. “I’ll take care of that.” Riza rises, retrieving her weapons maintenance kit from the drawer where she keeps it. This was one of the few things she bothered to unpack, along with some clothing and kitchen utensils. “Sorry. It’s going to smell a little oily in here.”

Riza takes the gun apart and washes the components, taking sips of tea in between her work. Edward watches her in silence, as if lost in thought. “I fired a few shots,” he says suddenly. “But I didn’t shoot anyone.”

“Good.” Riza dries off the barrel of the gun. “I’m glad you made it back to us safely, without having to compromise your ideals.” She understands his principles, even if she doesn’t always agree with them. (Some people deserve to be shot.) But if she’d held such strong principles as a young woman, that would have prevented her from enlisting in the army. Her life would have unraveled in a different course entirely. One that would have been bloodless and peaceful. 

Edward’s gaze slides off to the side. “It wasn’t that I didn’t have to shoot anyone,” he mumbles. “More like I couldn’t. I couldn’t pull the trigger, even when my friends were in danger.”

Riza’s hands still as she dries off the rest of the gun. What kind of world do they live in, that a fifteen-year-old is in a position where he needs to kill to protect his brother and his friends? That another fifteen-year-old is forced to amputate her own arm in order to save her friend’s life? 

Edward shifts in his chair, and Riza’s attention returns to him. “I’ve gotten used to the sight of guns, over the time I’ve been working for the military.” His mouth turns down in a bitter twist. “I know that the Colonel thinks I’m some idealistic kid, but I always knew that someday, I’d have to use a weapon. That day came, and I still couldn’t do it.” 

“Edward--”

“I’m pathetic,” Edward continues. “My lack of resolve is always causing problems for everyone around me.”

Riza thinks of Edward’s determination to restore Alphonse to his flesh-and-blood body.  _ Lack of resolve  _ is not a trait she would ever associate with Edward Elric. But he looks so sorrowful, so burdened by what he perceives as his failure, and Riza’s heart goes out to him. “You can tell me what happened.” She keeps her eyes on the gun, wanting to set him at ease. 

Edward is silent for several moments as he sorts through his thoughts. “Scar is the one who killed Winry’s parents,” he reveals, finally. “She got this gun, and she pointed it at him like she was going to kill him - and, I don’t know, this feeling just came over me.” He shrugs, helpless. “The gun seemed like the most terrible thing in the world. The next thing I knew, I was standing in front of Scar and begging Winry to put the gun down.”

Sorrow curls around Riza. She has carried the pain of her mother’s passing for most of her life, and it had been influenza that killed Cintra Hawkeye. She can’t imagine the toll it would take on a person, knowing that their beloved parents hadn’t perished of natural causes, but that their lives had been cruelly, deliberately extinguished by someone else’s actions.

Edward stares down into his cup of tea. “I’ve never seen her cry so hard before. She hated Scar enough to want to kill him, at that moment.” He closes his eyes briefly. “You know how Winry is. She’s always so happy. It’s easy to forget about the pain and loss she’s lived with for all this time.”

Riza nods wordlessly. Almost every time she has seen Winry, the girl has had a genuine, cheerful smile on her face. It must take such courage, to choose to have such a warm, kind demeanor, after all she has been through. Winry is as brave, in her own way, as Edward, Alphonse, and Lan Fan. 

“That’s why Al and I promised her that we would never let ourselves get killed, you know. We didn’t want to put her through that again.” Edward props his head in his hand and heaves a sigh. “But this time was our closest call. We made it back okay, but things could have just as easily gone the other way. It would have been another loss for her to bear. I can’t stop thinking about what would have happened if Ling hadn’t saved me. I can’t even take care of myself - no wonder she worries about me so much.” 

The sentiment strikes a powerful chord in Riza. It nearly leaves her breathless for how viscerally it reminds her of her feelings of weakness, in the aftermath of the incident at the Third Laboratory. 

“You’re able to worry about things like this because you made it back in one piece.” Riza begins to reassemble her gun, and she thinks back to her Colonel’s orders to her in the hospital. The words had been sharp, but they made an indelible impression on her. “I know that no matter how difficult things get, you’ll continue to keep fighting and living, so that you won’t let down the person you love.”

Edward freezes mid-sip of his tea. “What?”

His voice cracks, and Riza tries not to smile. “That is how you feel about Winry, isn’t it?”

Edward splutters on his tea, shaking his head furiously, his blonde braid flying. “It’s not like that! She’s just a childhood friend - she’s like family to me! That’s why I feel the way I do for her!”

Riza bites back her amusement. Edward’s denial reminds her of her own reactions when Havoc, Breda, and Fuery have teased her about her devotion to Roy.  _ It’s not like that at all. He’s my Colonel, and I trust his vision for the future. That’s why I have to protect him.  _

But Edward doesn’t need to know all that. She returns to polishing her reassembled gun, and Edward takes another sip of his tea, his face still flaming red. Riza thinks back to what he had told her. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t know about what happened with Winry and Scar before. The gun just added to your burdens, and I didn’t intend that.”

Edward watches her reload the gun. “Has it ever been a burden to you?” he asks quietly. 

The question brings back memories that always haunt her. Memories that Riza cannot allow herself to forget, because the Ishvalans deserve better than to be forgotten. At the same time, they are memories that have to be placed at the back of her mind, because they would render her nonfunctional if they moved to the forefront. “I don’t have the right to talk about my burdens.” Riza’s hands are cold. She curls them around her mug of tea, trying to warm them.

Edward appears startled by her grim response. “Why not?”

Riza hadn’t expected to confront this today. To discuss this today. She exhales, looking down at the gun beside her. “Because I’ve taken many lives, and I chose to do so."

The words come out steady, slow, resolute. She had nearly stammered on them; on the admission that she was a murderer. 

In the seven years since returning from Ishval, Riza has reinvented herself, as much as she could. She chose not to serve as a sniper in the regions where her skills would be needed most, at Fort Briggs or Southern Command. She chose a bloodless career track in administration and support. She devoted herself to supporting Roy; to picking up her weapons only to protect Roy and her unit on the field, and to apprehend dangerous criminals like Scar, Gregory Hamlin, Asher Yorke, Warren Estes, Cale Kanter, and so many others. She had come to view herself as a protector, a guardian, a moral compass. She had come to view herself as  _ principled.  _ Scrupulous.

Her admission to Edward peels back the layers of lies she has told herself, over the past years. It peels back every attempt she has made to live the rest of her life in as decent and honorable a way as possible. Nothing good she has done, nothing good she has yet to do, negates or invalidates the fact that she is a murderer. Someone who had killed hundreds of innocent people.

Edward looks at her, and Riza is surprised that there is no disgust or contempt on his face. “People’s lives…” he starts, somewhat apprehensively. “Do you mean in Ishval?”

Riza’s breath catches in her throat. “Yes.”

Edward passes his mug from hand to hand, as if weighing his response, and then sets it down on the table. “Can you tell me about Ishval?”

The question takes Riza by surprise, makes her clench up with dread. The easy response, the one that nearly spills out of her, is  _ no.  _ She avoids discussing Ishval, whenever possible. On the rare occasions she has to, it leaves her feeling unsettled, nauseated, for the rest of the day. (A deserved sense of illness. A small price to pay. It is not an equivalent exchange. Using the principle of equivalent exchange, there is only one way, ultimately, finally, to even begin to make things right. Riza is more than willing to accept that.) 

“I’ve asked the Colonel about it a few times before, but he won’t say a thing.” Edward stares down at the table. “Nothing about Winry’s parents, or Scar, or even the shooting that triggered the civil war. There are so many things I don’t know anything about, and I hate being so ignorant.”

He looks at her plaintively, and a weight presses down on Riza’s chest. Edward trusts her enough to come to her with this question. She shouldn’t turn him away, as Roy had.  _ Perhaps this is what being a parent is. Answering the hard questions, even when you feel that you can’t bear to expose the ugly, harsh realities of this world to someone young and innocent. _

Riza remembers asking her mother about her father. Asking why he didn’t come play with them; why he didn’t spend time with them in the kitchen, or the garden or the meadow, or join them on their walks to town to get ice cream. She had noticed, but not understood, then, how Cintra’s smile faded somewhat at the questions. Her mother tried to protect her from the truth, but she had been a little girl of four or five, not a fifteen-year-old teenager. Had Cintra lived, Riza would have asked her many more difficult questions about her father - ones that would have been more difficult and painful to answer. 

Riza likes to think that her mother would have strived to answer those questions regardless. Cintra loved her daughter. She would have done that for her. She would have respected her enough to give her honesty. 

It pricks at Riza, the knowledge that she is as old now, at twenty-six, as her mother had been when she passed. Cintra never got to have a fifteen-year-old child. Riza will never, either. Being there to tend to Lan Fan’s injuries; being here to answer Edward’s questions… This is the closest she will ever come to being a mother. She will do what she can for them, as best as she can. 

“I can only speak from my own experience,” Riza begins. Black Hayate comes to sit close beside her, sensing the strain that lurks just beneath the surface. “I was still in the Academy when I was deployed to the front lines.”

Just like that, she is seventeen-almost-eighteen again, sitting on the transport with the other soldiers who were shipping out to Ishval. The only cadet, the only woman, on the convoy. Her pack clutched beneath her feet on the floor, her brand-new sniper rifle, a gift from Bresler, cradled on her lap. She had no idea what awaited her. No idea that she would leave Ishval several months later, changed (haunted) forever.

Riza tells Edward almost everything, as painful as it is. The time before Order 3066. The nightmarish months after Order 3066. 

(She doesn’t tell him about her sniper team. About the two suicides, the two desertions, about the way she and the rest of her team mutually came to a decision to overlook mothers fleeing with children.)

Riza tells him everything else about the war, including the role the State Alchemists played (the role that Roy played.) She talks until her mouth is dry and until her throat is tight.

Riza expects Edward to look at her with contempt and distaste, after hearing all of it. There is none of that in his expression as he looks at her; he simply appears troubled. “I know that the Colonel wants to be the next Fuhrer,” he observes, at last. “But even if he succeeds, as long as Amestris stays a military dictatorship, it’s only a matter of time before there’s another civil war, or more conflict with the other countries at our borders. Sure, he could do a better job of protecting this country, but in the end, once he’s through and a new Fuhrer takes his place, we’re still going to end up killing people from other countries. It was the Ishvalans then. It could be the Drachmans or the Aerugans next.”

Riza feels a flash of pride at Edward’s insight and empathy. “That’s true,” she notes. “We’ve talked about that. Our first priority will be to restore power to the parliament, which is nothing more than a puppet for the military right now. We’ll move this country toward a true democracy. Once that’s done, we can negotiate with other nations to reduce our armaments and find a way we can all coexist peacefully.”

“Arms reduction…” Edward muses. “Huh. That’s not going to be a popular move.”

“Arms reduction means abolishing the State Alchemist system as well, and shrinking the size of the military.” Riza pauses, uncertain of whether to continue, but she decides to press forward. Edward deserves the full truth. He won’t thank her later for keeping this from him. “This country can only move forward once the full extent of the military’s corruption is brought to light.”

“What do you mean? Do you want to tell people that Fuhrer Bradley was a homunculus?”

Riza shakes her head. “I mean that all of us who were praised as heroes during the Ishvalan campaign will be brought to trial as war criminals. In the just, peaceful Amestris that we want to create - we’ll be seen clearly, as the mass murderers we were.”

Riza doesn’t expect the look of actual panic that flits across Edward’s face. “And the Colonel wants that to happen? Isn’t that basically committing suicide?”

She can bear the thought of facing a firing squad for the acts she committed in Ishval. Riza knows very well that Roy had done even worse things, using Flame Alchemy to aid him in mass murder. Anyone would agree that he deserves death just as much as she does. Still, there’s a leaden heaviness inside her, as she inclines her head. “Yes.” 

“But the homunculi were the ones pulling the strings,” Edward insists, his voice rising. “They were the ones who caused the civil war.”

“Even if they were the ones responsible for it, we were the ones who carried it out,” Riza tells him, softly but firmly. She had a choice. She could have refused to obey the orders she was given to kill Ishvalan civilians, and faced the consequences for her refusal. Whether those consequences were court-martial and imprisonment, or execution for insubordination. Other Amestrian soldiers made that choice. They took their dishonorable discharges, their jail time, or their executions. They served their time - or died - with honor. With their principles and their consciences, their souls, intact. On the other hand, she’d made the choice to be a pawn of her corrupt government; to go along with their orders. To kill innocents. 

If she could go back, she would make a different choice. But there is no going back in life, only moving forward. 

“You should never avert your eyes from death,” Riza whispers, remembering the words Solf Kimblee spoke to her, so long ago. Wisdom from the most unexpected of sources. Those words have always stayed with her. “Never forget the people you have killed.” 

Edward curls his automail fingers into a fist. It trembles on the table. “Yes, but what you want to do isn’t fair,” he grits out. “It’s not right. Of course you want the world to be a better place, but don’t you want to be happy too?”

_ More than you know.  _ The dreams that she has given up play out before Riza’s eyes. She would have loved to have - love. A husband, a daughter (or maybe a daughter, and a son with blonde hair and golden-brown eyes) and a happy home for all of them to share

Perhaps Edward sees something of her conflict on her face. “Self-sacrifice,” he presses, “is nothing more than self-gratification.”

“This isn’t about martyrdom,” Riza corrects. “It’s our duty. If we have to sacrifice ourselves for this dream of a just country to be fully realized, that is what we must do. You’re the same way, to an extent.”

Edward blinks at her, taken aback. “What? What do you mean?”

“You would do anything to help Alphonse get his body back, wouldn’t you?” Riza asks pointedly. “Even if it meant sacrificing yourself in pursuit of that goal. Isn’t that true?”

Edward grumbles incoherently, rubbing the back of his neck. “Yeah, well, that’s different from what you and the Colonel want to do.” 

His concern for her, for them, is touching. Riza gives him a small smile, trying to reassure him. “You don’t have time to start worrying about us. Focus on all the things that you still need to do - like getting back your body and Alphonse’s. There are so many people who can’t wait for the day that you succeed.”

Edward hesitates before nodding, and Riza has the feeling that this won’t be the last time she and Roy hear about his opposition to parts of their plan. “Yeah.” He glances at the clock on the wall, and then winces. “Sorry for keeping you up so late. I’ll head out.”

“It’s no trouble at all.” Riza rises, pushing her chair in. “I heard from the Colonel that you and Alphonse plan to travel up north.”

“We’re leaving soon, yeah.” Edward puts his hands in his pockets. “We’ve never been there before. I wonder what it’ll be like.”

Riza thinks of Falman. “I have some friends at Fort Briggs. If I learn of any new information, I’ll ask them to help me get in touch with you.”

“Sure. Thanks.” Edward shifts from foot to foot, his unease palpable. “Will you be okay here?” he blurts. “You’re so close to the Fuhrer - it’s like you’ve been taken hostage by him.”

“It’s ironic, isn’t it? I have no knowledge of alchemy, but I’m in the closest proximity to the homunculi.” Major Armstrong, or Edward himself, would have been more useful to Roy in this position than she is. She’s near useless, except to be what Edward said - a hostage. Riza shrugs, not wanting him to pick up on her sudden bitterness; her resentment at herself. “It’s not so bad, being this close to the Fuhrer. If he lets his guard down, I’ll slip some poison into his tea.” 

Edward grins at that, and it lights up his entire face. He pauses on his way out the door, resting his hand on the door frame. “Oh, right. I forgot to mention that I have a message for the Colonel. Can you please tell him that Scar is still out there?”

This is the last thing they need - another complication. Riza wonders fleetingly how Scar, with his hatred of alchemists, would react if he knew the truth about Fuhrer Bradley. About Bradley’s motivations in executing Order 3066. Despite the fury she has carried with her ever since East City, since Scar’s threats to Roy and Edward, and what he did to Nina Tucker - for a moment, Riza’s heart aches for Scar. His people were slaughtered. Not due to a cruel political decision, but as part of a cold, calculated human sacrifice. It is atrocious in every sense of the word. “I’ll tell him.”

Edward halts, a few paces out from the door. “Lieutenant,” he says quietly, without turning back.

“What is it?” Riza asks, concerned. 

Edward turns to look at her. “Thank you for telling me about Ishval.”

There is such genuineness on his face, such compassion, as if he understands just how difficult it had been for her to recount such things. Everyone thinks of Alphonse as the sweeter and gentler one of the two brothers. Edward is every bit as kind - as occasionally rough around the edges as he may be. Both of them have grown into fine young men, despite the horrifying experience they endured as children. Their mother would have been proud of them, Riza knows. She certainly is.

Riza bends and picks Black Hayate up, smoothing her expression. She smiles, raising a hand in farewell. “Be safe.”

Edward waves at her. “You too.”

Riza watches him go. When he has disappeared down the hallway, out of sight, she finally closes and locks the door. Her apartment feels lonely and empty, forlorn, as it always does whenever she has visitors who depart.

Except it isn’t lonely, or empty. Not as it always is.

The ghosts return. They crowd into the living room, into the kitchen, pressing in on her from all sides. The ghosts of every person she had killed in Ishval. The ghosts of every single person Roy killed with the Flame Alchemy that she gave him. 

Riza bows her head and takes a deep, shuddering breath. Sensing her distress, Black Hayate squirms in her arms and presses his cold nose against her cheek, trying to soothe her. 

It isn’t going to be an easy night.

Riza walks to her bedroom, Black Hayate in her arms, her steps slow, her shoulders slumped.

-

Her days drag on, figuratively as well as literally. Over the weeks that follow, Riza learns that the Fuhrer enjoys exerting his power over her in small, petty ways. Chief among them is making her work unpredictable hours. He requires her to be in early every morning, at seven-hundred hours. Sometimes he has her stay late, until nineteen-hundred or even twenty-hundred hours, and sometimes he dismisses her at seventeen-thirty. She knows that Bradley is doing this in part to make it more difficult for her to meet with Roy after hours, but Riza hates being separated from Black Hayate, her one comfort, for so long. She bites the inside of her cheek, biting her anger back, so often that she develops a painful, tender sore there.

The sore on the inside of her cheek. The pressure of her fingernails as they dig into her palms. The tightness of her clenched jaw. These become the new companions that accompany her throughout her days. Riza has never been an angry person. Her calm nature and even temper have been an asset in the field and in the office alike. They helped her balance out a more hot-tempered commanding officer who has never shied away from getting into disputes. But Riza has never found herself as provoked on every level, from the miniscule to the egregious, as she is now. 

“I see you have a new assistant, Fuhrer,” General Ely comments, after a meeting with Bradley one Thursday afternoon. He looks Riza up and down, his attention lingering on her in a way that makes her skin crawl. “This used to be Mustang’s dog, right?”

“We had a dispute, he lost, and I took her as a trophy,” Bradley replies matter-of-factly, straightening his paperwork. “He’s lucky that’s all I took.”

Ely laughs. Riza stands by wordlessly, her demeanor a blank mask, and her fingers itch with how much she wants to draw her gun on him. On both of them. 

A dog. A trophy. This is how people talk about her now. 

Bradley dismisses her after Ely leaves, and Riza excuses herself to the women’s facilities. She shuts herself into one of the stalls and locks the door, wrapping her arms around herself and leaning against the wall. She swallows down her rage, and then tilts her head back up and stares at the ceiling, forcing herself to take a few deep breaths. On top of everything else, the painkillers she had taken thirty minutes ago to subdue her menstrual cramps haven’t kicked in yet, and the pain is more acute than usual this month. 

A few women enter, standing in front of the mirrors and gossiping lightly. Riza doesn’t recognize their voices, though she might have recognized their faces if she had seen them. The sound of their chatter sends a stab through her for the memory of doing this same thing with Rebecca back at East City Command. 

( _ Rebecca, I’m just here to use the bathroom. I don’t have time to gossip. _

_ I know, but wait until you hear what Markson said to Penley over on Jurich’s unit earlier--) _

“I hate my unit.” The words are emphatic. “They’re a bunch of deadbeats, aside from Lea. Colonel Fairmont isn’t much better either. This isn’t what I thought I would get when I was assigned to Central.” The speaker, whoever she is, laughs. “I wish the Fuhrer would dissolve _ my _ unit and make me his assistant. That would be so much better than dealing with these idiots all day.”

Riza goes very still.

“I wonder why he did that to Mustang’s unit,” another woman muses. She speaks with a pronounced Western accent. “A little unusual, isn’t it? I’ve never heard of something like that happening.” 

“To punish Mustang,” a third chimes in, as if it should be obvious. “For fucking his Lieutenant.”

Riza stares at the locked bathroom door.  _ Go out there,  _ a small voice tells her.  _ Go out there and look them in the eye and see if they dare to continue.  _

But she can’t bring herself to move. Her feet stay rooted to the spot. Another cramp tears through her. Suddenly, Riza is weary, so weary. She is exhausted enough that she can’t bear the thought of another confrontation, on top of the many small battles she wages with the Fuhrer and with his staff and with herself every hour of every day. 

“No way,” the first woman replies, her tone heavy with skepticism. “Why didn’t they court-martial either of them, though? She got to be the Fuhrer’s assistant! That’s practically a promotion.”

“Optics,” the Western soldier says succinctly. “They’re both veterans of Ishval. And he’s the Hero of Ishval, for God’s sake. He practically ended the war. People would be like, let him fuck whoever he wanted for that, right?”

“Hmm.” The first soldier considers it. “Doesn’t he have this reputation, though? Of having a bunch of casual girlfriends? I heard he’s attended the annual officer’s ball with someone new every year.”

“A cover,” the third woman cuts in. “So that no one would get suspicious of his thing with her. Didn’t you ever wonder why none of those casual girlfriends ever got serious with him?”

“Having an affair with your commanding officer…” The first woman trails off. “That’s the kind of thing that gives all of us a bad name.”

“Yeah. I’ve seen her around before, at the joint training exercises. She seemed so… steady.” She pauses. “I really didn’t think she was the type.”

The words cut deep. It’s foolish, it’s ridiculous, that after everything she has been through, an overheard comment, another woman’s judgment, would have this effect on her. Riza’s eyes sting with tears nevertheless. 

“She was a sniper in Ishval,” the Western soldier points out. “It probably fucked her up.”

The third woman sighs. “Thank God we ended up at Central and not Briggs or the South. I’m so glad we won’t ever have to deal with being at the front.”

The women finally leave. Riza rests her forehead against the wall, blinking hard. The too-strong tea she had drunk earlier leaves a bitter aftertaste in her mouth. 

_ Having an affair with your commanding officer… That’s the kind of thing that gives all of us a bad name.  _

She had been that woman, in the past. She isn’t anymore. That was a comfort to her. A point of pride, a badge of honor,  _ look how far I’ve come.  _ It is much less so now, knowing that other woman still think she’s a--

It shouldn’t matter. Riza knows that. She knows that if Rebecca were here, her best friend would look her in the eye and tell her firmly,  _ What does it matter what anyone else thinks of you?  _

But it still hurts. It wounds her. Most men in the military aren’t respectful of female soldiers. ( _ I can see why Mustang kept her around for so long,  _ she’d heard a major whispering to another major, eyeing her up in line at the mess hall last week.) That is nothing new. But to know that the other female soldiers at Central Command think of her as some sort of disgrace is another matter entirely.

Riza takes another deep breath. She wipes her eyes. 

She steps out of the bathroom stall and washes her hands in water so hot it nearly scalds her skin. She returns to work.

-

The rest of the day does not improve. The Fuhrer keeps her late that evening - even though he leaves the office early - with orders to read and summarize several lengthy reports for him. He requests that she deliver her summaries to him tonight, in advance of his seven-thirty meeting the following morning.

Riza has her dinner at the mess hall and takes notes on the reports as she eats. She looks for Roy at the mess hall out of force of habit, and briefly contemplates checking to see if he’s upstairs at the office. It has been such a grueling day, and even just hearing his voice would lift her spirits. She puts the thought out of her mind with the next turn of the page of her report. She should continue to keep her distance from him. She doesn’t want the Fuhrer thinking that she is funneling any information to her Colonel. That would only put him in danger.

Riza finishes her work, organizes it in a folder, and takes a taxi to the Fuhrer’s estate. Four guards stand at the gate in front of the grounds, and another two are posted at either side of the manor’s front door. Both of them glare at her, and Riza wonders if they, too, know of Bradley’s true nature. 

She has dreamed of burning this manor to the ground. Burning Bradley alive, just as Roy had immolated Lust. Riza contemplated doing this on a night where Mrs. Bradley and Selim were away, of course; visiting her family or traveling elsewhere in Amestris. She realizes now that it would be difficult, with the manor so heavily guarded. 

An elderly butler opens the door, allowing her to enter. Riza steps inside, blinking around at the opulence of her surroundings. This expansive manor, with its marble floors and ostentatious furniture, puts even Grumman’s manor to shame, making it look shabby in comparison. Riza bites the inside of her cheek. It is an outrage that so many people in Amestris should live in poverty, all while the country pours obscene amounts of money into its endless wars, and while the military leadership lives in wealth and luxury. 

And the top of the entire military structure isn’t even human. He’s a monster, using real humans’ lives as pawns in whatever sick game he is playing.

Mrs. Bradley descends the grand staircase, her fingertips gracefully skimming across the railing. She wears a lavender dressing gown and a pair of soft slippers, her hair in a loose bun at the nape of her neck. Even in the relaxed clothing, she looks as elegant as ever. “Good evening,” she greets, appearing mildly surprised to receive a guest at this hour. 

Riza’s instinct is to distrust the First Lady. What if she is one of the other homunculi? A monster, like her mate? It would make a perverse sort of sense. She stands at attention nevertheless, revealing none of her suspicion. “I apologize for disturbing you so late at night,” she says formally. “My name is Lieutenant Hawkeye. I’m Fuhrer Bradley’s personal assistant.”

“Oh, my.” Mrs. Bradley approaches her, and her features soften with kindly concern. “They certainly have you working late, dear.”

Riza gives her a polite nod, and extends the folder to her. “The Fuhrer said he would like to look these over by tomorrow.”

“I’m so sorry, but my husband isn’t here at the moment.” Mrs. Bradley takes the folder, and her fingers brush Riza’s. They feel warm. Human. There’s none of the sense of foreboding that marked her initial interactions with each of the homunculi - Lust, Gluttony, Wrath. “I’ll make sure he gets these.” 

Riza considers the question of where Bradley is, if he’s not here or at Central Command. The next question that comes to mind is what Mrs. Bradley knows about her husband. If the Fuhrer’s inner circle knows his true nature, then surely Mrs. Bradley knows as well. For the first time, Riza stops to weigh the implications of Fuhrer Bradley having a wife and a child. Surely his relationship with his wife is just an act. A monster like him, something so callous, couldn’t be capable of love.

A sudden spike of cold dread and fear jolts her out of her reverie. Riza whirls around, her hand reflexively moving to her gun. She gasps at the sudden release of tension when she sees that it’s just Selim Bradley, the Fuhrer’s son, standing behind her, looking her over. 

“Selim!” Mrs. Bradley places her hands on her hips. “Why are you still up?”

Riza’s heart pounds in her chest. “Hello, Master Selim,” she greets, as normally as she can, her mind racing. Why had she reacted like that? Why had she felt that sense of foreboding? Had it just been because she was thinking of the other homunculi?

Or perhaps Mrs. Bradley isn’t the homunculus close to the Fuhrer after all. 

“Hello!” Selim beams. “I heard a noise at the front door. I thought Father came home.”

Mrs. Bradley goes to him, wrapping an arm around him and drawing him close, a tender, motherly gesture. “Selim, this is Lieutenant Hawkeye. She’s your father’s new personal assistant.”

Selim gives her another broad, sincere smile. “Good evening, Lieutenant Hawkeye.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you.” Riza tries not to stare at the boy. Her skin crawls.  _ No,  _ she tells herself.  _ Surely that can’t be the case.  _ How could a homunculus wear the body of a child? Does that mean whoever created these abominations took an innocent child and forced him to play a host to the homunculus? It wouldn’t be outside of the realm of possibility. It would be just like what happened with Ling Yao and the homunculus Greed. 

“You’re working very late.” Selim regards her earnestly. “Thank you for working so hard.”

“I came to deliver some urgent documents to the Fuhrer,” Riza explains.  _ I hope I’m wrong. I hope I’m just being paranoid.  _ In the next moment -  _ no. Trust your instincts.  _ These instincts have never led her wrong before. “I’m sorry to disturb your rest, Mrs. Bradley, Master Selim.”

The butler approaches Selim, taking him by the hand. “Come now, Master Selim. It’s time for you to go back to bed. Otherwise you’ll oversleep tomorrow.”

“Okay.” Selim agrees easily, falling into step behind the butler. 

Mrs. Bradley watches him go. Adoration is written all over her expression. Her eyes positively brim with it. It’s the same way Hughes and Gracia looked whenever they spoke of Elicia, and Riza is startled at the stirring of envy deep within her. 

“He loves his stepfather so much,” Mrs. Bradley says. “He wants to be a soldier when he grows up, just like him.”

Riza pastes a smile on her face. “Your son seems very bright.”

Mrs. Bradley laughs softly. “Isn’t he? He’s my pride and joy. I’m so happy that we were able to adopt him.”

She hadn’t realized that Selim was adopted. She assumed Mrs. Bradley must have had him late in life - she’s read articles in magazines about women having children even in their early forties. Riza wouldn’t think twice about hearing of a child joining a family through adoption in any other circumstance, but in  _ these  _ circumstances, knowing what she knows about Fuhrer Bradley... She has the brief, revolting mental image of a child plucked from an orphanage by the Fuhrer and taken to be experimented upon, a homunculus planted inside him.

“Perhaps he gets his outgoing nature from your side of the family,” Riza ventures, desperate to assuage her worries. If Mrs. Bradley adopted Selim as a baby, then there should be no chance that he is a host to a homunculus. Surely not even a homunculus would want to use a baby as a vessel. 

“Selim is from my husband’s side of the family.” Mrs. Bradley strokes her own light brown hair somewhat self-consciously. “They have the same black hair and dark eyes. I can see the resemblance between them as clear as day. Would you like to come to the sitting room, Lieutenant Hawkeye? I’ll have the butler prepare us some tea, and we can wait for my husband to return.”

The confirmation that Selim is from Bradley’s side of the family leaves Riza numb. She knows very well what Bradley calls  _ family.  _ The likes of Lust, Gluttony, and Greed. She bows her head politely, reeling from the First Lady’s revelation. “Thank you for your kind offer, Mrs. Bradley, but I need to return to Central Command. Have a good night.”

Mrs. Bradley bids her a cheerful goodnight. Riza retreats, feeling the guards’ gazes boring into her back as she leaves. The grounds of the presidential manor are empty, and Riza walks quickly, her boots clacking on the hard concrete beneath her feet. She can’t be so obvious about it, but she wants to break into a run, and go straight to the person she always turns to in times of duress. She wants to tell him what is on her mind and plan for the next steps that they have to take together, as they have done so many times in the past. 

It doesn’t add up. Roy told her that Bradley was raised in isolation since childhood, as the subject of an experiment. As a result, he shouldn’t have any family at all. He had introduced Selim to his wife under false pretenses, which is suspicious enough. That, combined with the dreadful shiver of foreboding she had upon meeting Selim…

“Are you putting it all together, Lieutenant Hawkeye?”

The voice is soft, distorted. Inhuman. It is like the ground falls out from beneath her, and Riza halts mid-step. 

“All thanks to my stepmother.” The voice pauses, and there’s an almost rueful note to it. “She just doesn’t know when to shut up.”

Riza closes her eyes for a moment, steeling herself. To her surprise, she knows a moment of pity for Mrs. Bradley, who had spoken of Selim with such tenderness. She has no idea. She has no idea that her beloved son is a monster.

“It was you, actually,” Riza replies, as evenly as she can. “Your presence - your aura - is what gave you away. It was the same thing I sensed when Gluttony tried to ambush me. What are you, Selim Bradley?”

“You’ve got some nerve to ask me a question like that, considering your circumstances.” Riza braces herself, picking up on the threat that underlies the creature’s amusement. “Such bravery, Lieutenant. But you’ve shown good judgment by keeping your gun holstered. Drawing it would only get you killed.” 

Riza hears something then, soft and shifting, like the sound of snakes slithering across stone. Every fiber of her being demands that she turn around and face her enemy, but she keeps herself still as a statue. It isn’t fear that motivates her, but caution. If she looks upon it, it might kill her. She can’t die here and now - not before she warns her Colonel that she has identified another one of their enemies. 

“You’re a homunculus, like Gluttony. But…” Riza stares straight ahead.  _ Stay alive,  _ she thinks.  _ I have to do whatever I can to stay alive.  _ “There’s something about you that’s different from him.”

“I’m offended that you would even put me in the same league as Gluttony,” the voice snaps, suddenly irritable. “You asked my name, Lieutenant? It’s Pride. And I was the  _ first  _ homunculus.”

Dread mounts inside her. It’s taking every bit of self-control she has to not face the threat head-on and fire on it. She can’t stand leaving her back exposed for her enemy to sink its teeth into. 

“You said you were the first homunculus.” Sweat beads on Riza’s forehead, in spite of the chill in the night air. “What do you mean by that?” It’s unlikely that he - it - will explain anything to her, but she has to give it a shot. 

“I mean what I told you.”

Riza flinches, her neck snapping downwards as she stares at her legs in horror. A dozen pitch-black tendrils creep up her legs, winding around them, holding her in place. The tendrils snake up her legs, up her waist - oh god, she wants to scream - and wind around her wrists, crushing them. Fear makes her dizzy; makes her breath come in short, sharp exhalations. She has never felt so afraid in her life, not even when Lust unsheathed her long, dagger-like claws, not even when Gluttony held her immobile in his massive hands, pulling her toward his open mouth, his jaw unhinging before her. The only small mercy is that Roy and the rest of her unit aren’t here to face the same threat.

“Are you actually trying to get information from me?” Pride sounds impressed at her temerity. “You’re a courageous one.”

There’s a pressure around her neck, and Riza can just make out another shadow rope winding around her throat, compressing her windpipe, choking the breath out of her. Terror stabs into her with every shallow breath. She can’t stop thinking about Hughes in the phone booth.  _ It can’t end like this,  _ she thinks, desperation clawing at her.  _ I can’t leave Roy alone to face this. And I haven’t done anything yet for Ishval. It can’t end now.  _

The shadow rope continues winding its way around and up her neck. Once, twice, again. It brushes against her face, caressing her cheek like a lover. Riza tries to recoil, to no avail. “Have you considered switching sides and joining us?” Pride asks, sweetly solicitous.

Bradley asked her the same thing, on her first day as his assistant. The memory makes Riza bristle. “Why would I? I won’t be a pawn to you.” Ling Yao made his choice, with regards to the homunculus Greed - but she would rather die here, now, as an honest, human woman, than live for even one day allied with these creatures. 

“So, that’s a no?” Pride sighs its disappointment. “Oh, well.”

The shadow tendrils grip her arms with vice-like strength. Riza lashes out reflexively, trying to shake them off, but it’s useless. The shadows crush her throat, and she gasps in terror and rage. More than anything else, she’s incensed that she’s going to die like this, like a trapped animal, without even a gun in her hand to try and fight back against her enemy.

One of the shadows slashes against her cheek. The vicious slice draws blood that trickles down her face, hot on her skin. Pride could do the same thing to her neck, ripping open her jugular with no difficulty, and Riza is struck by a sick, sudden sense of clarity. He is just playing with her. Just as Bradley does. 

“Are you having fun with your empty threats?” Riza snaps. “It would be wasteful to kill your hostage, wouldn’t it?”

Pride laughs. It is a terrible thing, a mockery of the joy and lightheartedness that should come with a laugh. The shadow tendrils unwind from her neck and arms, sliding down her body in an unholy, indecent caress, and Riza trembles. 

“You’re quite right,” Pride notes. “But you know what will happen if you speak of this to anyone. Colonel Mustang and your other friends will not go unharmed.”

Riza stiffens in response to the threat. Their faces flash before her mind’s eye in turn. Roy, Rebecca, Fuery, Falman, Breda, Havoc, Edward and Alphonse--

“Remember that, Lieutenant,” Pride whispers. “No matter where you are, I’ll be watching you from the shadows.”

The evil sensation vanishes as abruptly as it appeared. Riza spins in the direction of the threat, and sees nothing. She is alone in the stone hallway, under the light of the full moon. 

Her breathing comes quickly and unevenly, almost in whimpers.  _ I’ll be watching you from the shadows.  _

Riza looks down at her own shadow, and she recoils.

She makes her way back to her apartment in a daze, walking as fast as she can without breaking into a run, steering clear of the shadows thrown by the streetlamps. At any moment, she expects to feel that sense of dread paralyzing her; the shadows curling up her legs and pinning her arms and choking the breath out of her again. 

It is a relief when her apartment building comes into view. Riza takes the stairs two at a time, her hand shaking as she grips the railing. No. She shouldn’t be fooled by the false security of her apartment building, or any building.  _ No matter where you are, I’ll be watching you from the shadows. _

Riza fumbles with her key in the lock, before shoving the door open. A pair of glowing eyes stares at her out of the darkness. She stops dead, petrified, terror gripping her. 

Then Black Hayate trots forward, wagging his tail. All the breath leaves her body in a long sigh, and she sags with relief. Riza flicks the light on, and shuts and locks the front door behind her (as if that is going to do any good). She braces her back against the wall and slides to the floor, limp with exhaustion and panic, resting her throbbing head in her hands.

_ No matter where you are, I will be watching you from the shadows.  _

How is she going to communicate with Roy now? How is she going to tell him what she needs to, and help him with his resolution of eliminating Bradley and the rest of the homunculi? Pride can watch her whenever he wants - whenever he  _ fucking  _ wants - and Riza is nauseated by the intensity of her own fury. By the outrageous intrusion into her privacy, and her sense of security. Pride can watch her, listen to her, whenever he wants, and report anything that she and Roy say to one another back to Fuhrer Bradley. If either of them say one word that they shouldn’t, he will imprison Roy until it’s time for him to fulfill whatever dark purpose the Fuhrer has in mind for him.

The phone rings, shattering the silence in the apartment, and Riza flinches. It continues to ring insistently. This is the last thing she wants to do, but she pulls herself to her feet, heading to the phone resting on the table. Ever since that phone call from Roy at two in the morning, breaking the news about Hughes, she has developed something of a phobia of late night phone calls. A fear that each call will bring terrible news. Even in the weeks before Hughes’ murder, Riza flinched at every late night phone call she received, expecting that they would bring news of Roy or Edward mangled by Scar.

Riza’s hands are clumsy on the phone. It almost slips out of her grasp. “Hello?”

“Why hello there, madam! This is your neighborhood florist.”

The bright cheer in Roy’s voice is a stark contrast to her own mood. Riza rubs her forehead, suddenly worn out from this day - this long, hellish day. She doesn’t want to have a phone conversation with Roy, where she has to watch every word out of her mouth to keep anyone overhearing or surveilling them from getting suspicious. She wants to talk to him honestly - or, better yet, be with him and not talk at all. “What are you talking about, Colonel?”

Roy sighs. “Ah, sorry. I kind of got drunk and somehow bought a car full of flowers. Do you want to do me a favor and take some off my hands?”

Riza closes her eyes. She can’t even find the words. She can’t bring herself to pretend that nothing is wrong. But she can’t tell him the truth, either. All that comes out is a small, almost defeated exhalation.

Roy’s demeanor changes instantly. “What’s wrong?” he demands. “Did something happen?”

Riza blinks, caught off guard by his perceptiveness. “No, sir. It’s nothing.”

There’s a long pause on the other end of the line. “Are you sure?”

Riza wants to hold his voice close. More than that, more than anything else right now, she wants  _ Roy  _ close. She wants the comfort of his arms around her. She wants to cuddle against him and bury her face in his shoulder. It is a weak, unprofessional impulse, and she suppresses it. “Yes, sir,” Riza manages to say. “And I’m sorry, but I don’t own a flower vase. Thank you for thinking of me, though. Have a good night.”

“Good night, Hawkeye.” Roy’s voice is soft. Riza remembers every single time he has wished her goodnight like that, over the years. She used to see him every single work day, and on the occasional weekend, too. They have gone from being in near-constant contact to barely seeing one another at all. It is jarring, and she misses him like she would miss her right arm.

Riza hangs up the phone. She turns back to Black Hayate, who has come to sit by her feet. She kneels and gives him a hug, stroking the soft fur at his neck. Perhaps it is silly, perhaps it is juvenile, but just hearing Roy’s voice had set her at ease somewhat. “It’s amazing, how uncanny his timing is,” Riza confides.

Black Hayate wags his tail in response and presses close. 

Riza takes him for a walk at the park across the street. Black Hayate’s presence at her side, as well as the memory of her conversation with Roy, allows her to have some peace of mind. She returns to her apartment, measures some food into Black Hayate’s bowl, and begins to pace around her living room in circles, unsure of how to proceed. 

_ You know what will happen if you speak of this to anyone, don’t you? Colonel Mustang and your other friends will not go unharmed. _

Riza rubs her hands over her arms, trying to warm herself. She can’t keep this momentous piece of intelligence to herself. She has to tell her Colonel. It’s a good thing for both of them that they have their own methods of covert communication. She can say everything she needs to Roy without Pride being any the wiser.

Riza turns on every light in her apartment, banishing every trace of darkness and shadow. Then she grabs a pencil and a piece of paper from the drawer and sits down at her kitchen table to begin her task.

-

Riza is unable to fall asleep that night. She lies in bed and stares at the ceiling, her fingers clamped around fistfuls of her blankets. No amount of trying to distract herself with happy, comforting memories is effective in stopping her mind from recounting the night’s horror. She finally drifts off sometime after two in the morning, and her dreams are punctuated by nightmares that leave her jolting awake and crying out, trying to pull invisible ropes from around her neck and her wrists.

She looks like a wreck the following morning, her skin gaunt, bruise-like shadows under her eyes. After Black Hayate’s morning walk and her shower, Riza takes time that she doesn’t really have to open one of the cardboard boxes in the living room. She digs through it until she finds a bag of cosmetics. She hasn’t done this in months, not since Hughes’ funeral, but she applies concealer under her eyes, powder and a hint of blush to her cheeks, and a bit of peach-tinted lip balm. Just enough to give her the appearance of her normal, well-rested self. She refuses to walk into Bradley’s office looking like a shell-shocked wreck. He can never know how Pride had shaken her.

Riza goes into work. The Fuhrer makes no mention of her encounter with Pride, and she is proud of how well she feigns normalcy; how completely she retreats into her calm and stoic shell. The long years of practice have served her well. But even simple things like walking down the hall to the women’s facilities, or delivering paperwork to other staff members’ offices, rattle her. With every step, she expects to see Pride extending his dark, serpentine arms, his grasping hands, toward her. 

Riza goes down to the mess hall for lunch at twelve-thirty, shortly before the time that Roy normally takes his lunch break. She sits alone, as usual, and begins to eat her food without quite tasting it. 

This situation is untenable. She has to hold it together, as Roy ordered her to do in the hospital. It could be several months before Roy gathers the resources necessary to execute his coup. She won’t be any use to the insurrection, she won’t be any use to  _ him,  _ if she has a nervous breakdown before then. She’ll take a sleeping pill tonight to help her get a full night’s sleep. Starting tomorrow, she’ll plan on going for a long run or weightlifting session every single day. She needs to deplete her body to the point where she’ll have no choice but to succumb to sleep every night. Hopefully, a dreamless sleep. 

“Is this seat taken?”

Riza glances up sharply. She had planned for this meeting by deliberately placing herself in the mess hall during her Colonel’s lunch break, but she was so consumed in her own thoughts that he took her by surprise. “No,” she replies. “Go ahead, sir.” 

Roy sets his tray down on the table, studying her. “What’s wrong? You seem a little down.” 

Riza’s wrists throb at that, from where the shadow tendrils restrained her. She fights the urge to rub them. “Nothing. It’s nothing. How’s work going for you, sir?”

Roy flings himself into his seat, tossing his paperwork to the side, and takes a giant bite of his sandwich. “See for yourself,” he mumbles, scribbling his signature half-heartedly on a report, narrowly avoiding getting a smear of mustard on it. “Since I was deprived of my assistant, I have to work through every meal in order to keep up.” His gaze lingers on the cut on her cheek, and his eyes narrow slightly. “How about you?”

Riza tears a small chunk off her roll of bread. “There are always challenges in adapting to a new office, sir. But the Fuhrer is very organized, which is helpful.”

Roy frowns - which he sometimes does, when she compliments men who aren’t him, Riza realizes belatedly. She takes a bite of her food, testing him. “And he never slacks off.”

Roy gives her a distinctly sulky look. “I don’t like where this conversation is going.” He pushes his salad around with his fork aimlessly, and then glances up at her. “Why don’t we go get a bite to eat sometime?”

Riza blinks, nonplussed. Had he just asked her out on a date?  _ Well,  _ the small voice from the back of her mind speaks up,  _ he’s within his rights to do so. You’re not his subordinate anymore.  _

But she will be again, and hopefully soon. Roy will be the Fuhrer then, the President of this country, and there would certainly be scandal if he were discovered to be having an affair with a Lieutenant on his staff. It would ruin his reputation, and hers too.  _ Not that mine is untarnished. My reputation has never been worse than it is right now.  _

“Isn’t that what we’re doing right now, sir?” Riza demurs.

Roy winces. “That’s harsh. I’m zero for two today.” 

A flicker of jealousy kindles inside her. Riza extinguishes it, appalled by the reaction. She isn’t a teenage girl. “Zero for two?”

“I just ran into Major General Armstrong from up north and asked if she would like to have dinner.” Roy slouches in his seat somewhat. “She flat-out turned me down.” 

Riza can’t help but smile. Roy has been trying to win Olivier Armstrong’s friendship and respect for years, to no avail. He’s even enlisted her to plead his case on multiple occasions.  _ I like you, Hawkeye,  _ Major General Armstrong told her once, pointing at her with a manicured fingernail.  _ You have potential. But that commanding officer of yours is a clown. If you ever decide to have higher standards for the leaders you follow, put in a transfer request for Fort Briggs.  _

Riza passed on this message to Roy with a straight face, and he screeched his indignation.  _ A clown? She called me a clown?  _ “She turned you down again, sir?”

“Yeah.” Roy actually pouts. “She’s as cold as ever.”

Riza takes a sip of her tea. She can’t help but look down at the shadows underneath the table, and she makes up her mind in an instant. As tempting as it is to just continue this conversation and enjoy the moment, now is the time to relay the message. She won’t let her fear of Pride hold her back from doing what needs to be done; from doing her duty as her Colonel’s Lieutenant. 

Riza sets her mug down, tapping it on the table twice. Roy looks up from his paperwork, giving her his full attention. He already has a pen and paper in front of him, which is excellent. “Apparently Scar is up there now, sir,” she starts. “The Elric brothers went as well.”

Riza tells him everything she has to, and taps her empty mug on the table twice to indicate the end of her message. She looks at the clock and then grabs her tray, realizing that she’s due to return to duty in just over three minutes. “I need to get back. If you’ll excuse me, sir.”

Roy gives her a small wave, immersed in looking down at the message she had left him. Now all she can do is hope he caught all of it. Even if Pride had been listening in, there is no reason to think that he would be able to decipher their code. 

Riza returns to work.

-

She visits Havoc in the hospital after work, walks Black Hayate, makes dinner, and calls Rebecca. She doesn’t have much energy to talk, but she asks Rebecca to tell her everything about what’s going on with her life and the various happenings at East City Command, and it is a welcome distraction. Riza spends the rest of her night attempting to think of articles for her next month’s magazine contribution.

She takes a sleeping pill at twenty-one hundred hours, since it is a weekend tomorrow, and falls asleep within minutes of her head hitting the pillow.

It gives her a long, uninterrupted sleep, but her sleep is still marred by nightmares. Riza wakes at seven-thirty sharp the following morning and lies in bed, unable to summon the strength to rise. Such weakness, such lack of resolve, is unlike her. 

It takes several minutes to even begin to gather her scattered thoughts. One plaintive yearning comes back, over and over again.  _ I’m hungry.  _

But not for food. Riza wants to be embraced and held and soothed, her back rubbed, a gentle kiss pressed to the top of her head, and then to her brow. It hurts, how intensely, how viscerally, she craves the comfort of touch, of a loving embrace. 

A couple of nights ago, she had wanted that comfort from Roy. Last night, on the phone with Rebecca, she had thought of how nice it would be to hug Rebecca tight, and sit beside her on the sofa underneath a blanket, listening to steamy radio dramas and eating chocolate pudding. She’d thought of Grumman, too, and how he made her feel at home in his study, sitting across from him in the armchair in front of the fire, sipping wine and talking. 

Riza reaches a hand out to Black Hayate, who nuzzles close. She could go and find Roy. Or she could take a train to East City (away from this godforsaken, corrupt city, away from Pride, from Wrath), and visit Rebecca and Grumman. Any of them would be happy to hold her, to love her. 

But that isn’t what she’s craving. She realizes that now. 

Riza turns on her side, and wraps her arm around Black Hayate.

She wants her mother. Maybe it’s senseless, ridiculous, how painfully and deeply she has woken up missing and longing for a mother who has been dead for a full twenty-one years. But Riza wants a hug from her mother, and to be called  _ sweetheart,  _ and to pick vegetables from Mother’s garden together, bright green peppers warmed by the sunshine. She wants to sit by her side at the piano and play a duet. She wants to walk into town together and get dishes of ice cream and sit in the meadow, amongst the wildflowers, and talk for hours. 

She wants something she can never have. 

Riza starts to cry, for the first time in weeks and weeks. She weeps into her pillow, curling into herself, a tight ball of misery. She sobs for her mother, dead at twenty-six (just twenty-six,  _ Riza _ is twenty-six) from influenza, when people who are thrice her age contract influenza and make a full recovery. She even cries for her father, who had died young, too, decades before his time, ravaged by an illness he didn’t care enough to treat. If they hadn’t died, she wouldn’t have made the mistake of joining the military, and she wouldn’t have killed hundreds of innocent people. People no older than her mother and father when they breathed their last, and people younger than that, too.

But the Ishvalans would have died anyway, even if she hadn’t been the one pulling the trigger. Fuhrer Bradley and the rest of his brethren would have ensured that would happen, to serve their own terrible ends. Riza weeps anew at that, pulling the covers tighter around her. Black Hayate whimpers, pawing at her in concern, and she holds his paw. 

They live in a cruel world. She has tried to do what she can to make it less cruel; tried to surround herself with like-minded people who are just as dedicated to working toward a better and kinder future, but still. Everything that has happened over the past months, Nina Tucker and Scar, Hughes and Havoc, learning the truth about Fuhrer Bradley and about Amestris and Ishval, has shaken her to her core. 

Riza cries until she has no tears left to cry. She lies in bed and wipes her face with the covers, and feels the strange, removed calm that always settles on her after a long spell of tears.

She takes a hot shower and gets dressed in a sweater and skirt. She feeds Black Hayate, whispering apologies for making him wait so long, and takes him out for a walk. When they get back home, she eats breakfast, looks at the time, and then goes to find her dog, who is curled up on the sofa. “Black Hayate,” Riza says. “Would you like to go on a trip with me?”

They walk to the station, and Riza purchases a ticket for the nine-thirty to Cecil. They board the train, which is low in occupancy enough for Black Hayate to be able to sit beside her on his own seat. 

Riza stares out of the window as the scenery flies by, lost in thought about the last time she made this trip, in the opposite direction. The day she left home for the last time and boarded the train to Central and the military academy. She’d enlisted on her seventeenth birthday. She had been so young. So timid and unsure of herself. That was before training as a soldier, before Ishval, before Rebecca, even. 

Riza enjoys watching her surroundings become progressively more rural and remote along the journey. It reassures her to put distance between herself and Central and the homunculi there, even though the distance is temporary. Ever since Hughes’ murder, she has come to think of Central as not the cosmopolitan capital city of Amestris, but the rotten core of this corrupt country. The lion’s den. A pit of serpents, as her grandfather once called it. It is a relief to leave it. To see forests and meadows, farmland and corn fields, and small towns and villages where citizens live out their lives in peace, far away from the monstrous leadership of their country.

They disembark three and a half hours later. Riza stares around, holding Black Hayate’s lead, as the two of them leave the platform. It’s been expanded. There are two rail lines now, not the single one that she remembers. It has been nine years since she last set foot in Cecil, but her feet carry her exactly where she needs to go without a moment of hesitation or confusion. Riza looks up and down the streets as she walks, her heart in her throat.

Everything has changed for her, but nothing has changed for the town. The storefronts are more weathered, but otherwise the same. The general store. The book shop. The second-hand clothing store where Riza had purchased all of her things. 

She could turn left here, on Third Street, if she wanted to go to the market. Riza remembers countless trips to the market, with Mother and then alone, carrying her big woven basket on her arm. It had been a struggle to carry the groceries all the way back home when she was seven, and she would have to take a few breaks along the way. 

Riza does not turn left on Third Street, which would take her to the market. She does not turn right on Acorn and follow it all the way to the end of the dirt road, which would take her to the place that was once home. She goes right on Crescent Street and follows Crescent all the way to the outskirts of Cecil, Black Hayate padding along loyally at her side. There are more trees here on the outskirts of town, maple and oak and aspen. They have lost half their leaves by this time of the season, and her feet crunch on the fallen leaves. The leaves that remain are brilliant shades of dark red and bright orange and yellow, standing in sharp contrast to the heavy slate-gray of the sky.

The cemetery is empty, and Riza’s hand trembles as she pushes open the rusted metal gate. It squeaks when she opens it, and Black Hayate’s ears perk up. “It’s all right,” she says, as much for her sake as his.

It has been nine years since she last visited this cemetery, but Riza finds her mother within a matter of minutes. She comes to a stop before Cintra Hawkeye’s gravestone, and swallows over the tightness in her throat as she gazes at her mother’s name, at her dates of birth and death. So close to one another. Black Hayate sits at her feet.

Riza tries to speak, and no words come out. She sinks to the ground, to her knees. The cemetery isn’t maintained particularly well; the ground is covered with fallen leaves. Riza knows that Mother wouldn’t mind, though. She loved autumn leaves. 

(During that last autumn, a mere month or so before Cintra contracted the illness that would take her life, Riza and her mother walked through the woods and picked the biggest, prettiest, most colorful leaves together. When they got home, Cintra gave Riza a warm mug of apple cider, and showed her how to press the leaves between the pages of the biggest, heaviest books in the manor’s library.)

Riza smiles at the memory, and wipes the tears from her eyes. “Mother,” she says. “It’s been a while. I’m sorry I haven’t come to visit in so long. I have so much to catch you up on.”

The words spill out of her easily, more easily than she would have imagined. Riza knows that she’s sitting in front of a grave, but she remembers Mother in her mind’s eye, and she’s seen so many pictures of Mother when she was younger. It’s easy to imagine Cintra as she was, sitting in front of her. Not a gravestone, but a living, breathing human woman.

( _ You look more like her every year,  _ Grandfather told her, on her twenty-fifth birthday. Riza remembered that on her twenty-sixth, which passed without celebration on the night before the Maria Ross operation. That night, she cried a little bit at the thought that she would turn twenty-seven next year, and then twenty-eight, and one day maybe even thirty-five, and those would all be years that Cintra Hawkeye never lived to experience in her own life.)

Riza strokes Black Hayate on the head, wondering where to start. She has so much to say. “I have a dog of my own,” she tells Mother, or the memory of her. “He’s here with me right now, so I didn’t have to come all the way from Central alone. I got him two years ago, when he was just a tiny puppy, about the size of Maisie. His name is Black Hayate. He’s very clever. You would love him. He’s black and white, just like your collie growing up. Like Sam. I know that he and Molly probably inspired the dog stories you used to tell me.”

Riza pauses, and takes a deep breath. “Grandfather - your father - told me about all of that. He gave me an album full of pictures, and your journals with your poetry and your writing. It’s the best gift that anyone has ever given me,” she confesses. “I’ve read your work so many times.”

She wipes her eyes again. “I met Grandfather when I was nineteen. I was nervous, and I almost didn’t want to go through with it, but I’m glad I did. I - I didn’t tell him that I was coming here today. He must have visited you about seven years ago when he came to Cecil, before he told me the truth of our relationship. I’m sure he told you this himself when he was here, but…” Riza falters. “He’s sorry for what happened. For the falling out. He was angry at Father, but he never stopped loving you.”

She has to stop then, for a little while, to regain her composure. “I met friends, too,” Riza says. She thinks of all of them in turn. Roy, Rebecca, Falman, Havoc, Breda, Edward, Alphonse. “They’re very dear to me. I remember how you told me that you would always be my friend, but it would be nice for me to have other friends to love. You were right.”

Riza looks up at the sky, at the gathering storm clouds there. She is overly aware of Father’s grave, just beside her mother’s. But she doesn’t want to tell Mother about any of that. About how after losing her, she went more than ten years without an embrace, without someone to hold her hand. She doesn’t want to tell Mother about how she taught herself how to cook the recipes in the old recipe book, just to feel close to her. She can’t bring herself to even begin to explain the Flame Alchemy tattoo. 

There are other things she doesn’t want to say, but she knows that she has to. Riza hesitates. Smooths out a crease in her skirt. “I’ve… I’ve made mistakes along the way, Mother.” 

She remembers Ishval. Remembers thinking how horrified Mother would have been, to see what her daughter had become. Cintra was gentle to the bone. She refused to swat flies or to kill spiders or bugs, instead ushering them outside to the back grounds of the manor. 

“I’ve done terrible things.” Riza swallows hard. “But I - I’m determined to do everything I can to try to atone. To rebuild what I had a part in destroying. To make sure that no one else does what we did, ever again. I’ve committed the rest of my life to this.”

Riza looks at the headstone for a long moment. “I don’t know if you can be proud of me, after the things I’ve done,” she says, at last. “But I hope that you are.” 

A breath of wind stirs the leaves around them. Black Hayate lifts his head off his paws, and Riza blinks, startled. The strangest sensation comes over her then; an inexplicable feeling of safety and warmth and reassurance. It is the complete antithesis of the cold, malignant terror that enveloped her when Pride held her in his grip. 

Riza gives the gravestone a small smile. “I was thinking earlier today that we live in a cruel world. But you made my world, as small as it was, warm and kind and happy, for all the time I had you. I’ll try to do the same for others.”  _ I won’t become cruel or hard, like this world we live in. We might be fighting monsters, but I will not become one.  _

She leans in, and presses a soft kiss to the stone. It is cool and rough against her lips. “I miss you. I love you, Mother.”

Riza stays until the thunder starts to rumble overhead. She stands, and it takes all of her strength and courage to turn her back on the grave and leave, Black Hayate following at her side. 

She does not stop at her father’s grave.

-

Riza and Black Hayate board the next train to Central. The rain is properly coming down by then, streaking down the windows. Riza is able to read a book on the journey back, which she doesn’t think she would have been able to do two days ago. 

It is odd, how this simple visit restored her to herself somewhat; returned her calm and composure. Even the sight of the Central City skyline looming on the horizon doesn’t leave her with more than a sense of faint resignation.

Riza and Black Hayate stop for dinner at a café near Central’s train station and then proceed back to her apartment. “Thank you for coming to Cecil with me,” Riza says to her dog. He looks up at her, smiles, and wags his tail.

She gets home and puts all the lights on, as she is in the habit of doing now. Her electricity bills will be high, but there is no helping that. The apartment is blissfully warm and dry, and Riza towels off Black Hayate first, before doing the same for herself. She changes into her pajamas and settles herself on the sofa with her notebook and pencil, ready to get to work on the introduction for her December magazine article.

Riza is two paragraphs in when her phone rings. She frowns at the interruption, but answers it quickly regardless. It’s the weekend, so Breda, Falman, or Fuery might be calling to check in. “Hello?”

“It’s me,” Roy says, by way of greeting. He sounds tense. The words are clipped, and his voice is low. “Is everything all right?”

“I’m fine.” The words actually aren’t a lie. “Is everything all right with you, sir?”

“Yeah. I just…” Roy trails off, and Riza imagines him running a hand through his hair, as he often does. “I called you earlier, but you didn’t pick up, and I guess I got a little worried.”

Riza rubs her temples, suspecting that  _ a little worried  _ is an understatement. Guilt wells up in her. “I’m sorry. I left town today and I just got back home. I should have let you know.”

“That’s all right.” Roy clears his throat. “Would you be up for some company tonight?”

Riza fumbles with the phone in a moment of utterly uncharacteristic clumsiness, and very nearly drops it. He probably just wants to discuss what she told him in the mess hall - covertly, of course. Still, she doubts whether that’s a good idea. If Bradley thinks that she and Roy are conspiring together, both of them could face dire consequences. 

“I would enjoy that, sir,” Riza tells him, mindful of the fact that her phone line is almost certainly under surveillance. “But I’m not sure if it’s wise. I know that the relationship between you and the Fuhrer has become strained. As a good subordinate, I don’t want to give my new commanding officer any reason to be distrustful of me.” 

“Obviously. I know how loyal you are. But you don’t have to worry, Riza. I promise that this will be a strictly personal visit.” Roy pauses, just long enough to allow his meaning to set in. His deliberate use of her name makes her heart pound in her chest.  _ Riza _ . She  _ loves  _ how he says it. “We won’t say a word about work.”

Riza raises an eyebrow, impressed by the boldness of the play. It makes sense. She should have thought of this herself - this convenient pretext for the two of them to have the occasional meeting in private. Of course. Everyone already thinks that they’re sleeping together. They wouldn’t break off an affair just because she now has a new commanding officer. 

“Fine,” Riza relents. Whatever Roy has in mind must be urgent, if he wants to take this risk. 

“I’ll be at your place in twenty minutes.” 

Riza hangs up the phone, straightens up the living room, and then prepares a couple of cups of tea. She has just put the tea in the hot water to steep when she hears Roy’s coded knock on her door. She grabs her pink sweater off the back of the sofa, settles it over herself like a cloak, and then opens the door. 

Roy stands just outside, dressed in a dark suit and his ubiquitous overcoat. He holds one enormous glass flower vase in the crook of each arm, and each vase is stuffed to near-overflowing capacity with deep red roses. “Hi,” he says, and then he offers her the vases somewhat awkwardly. “I heard you didn’t own any flower vases. So I thought I’d bring you some.”

Riza is suddenly grateful for her crying spell earlier in the day, and the tears she shed at her mother’s graveside. If she hadn’t had the emotional release then, she would have dissolved into tears right now, at this unexpected kindness. 

“You didn’t have to do that.” Riza accepts both vases, cradling them with difficulty as she shuts and locks the door. “But thank you.”

“I thought they might lift your spirits.” Roy watches as she sets the flowers out on the table, before bending to pet Black Hayate. Riza is too aware that if Roy were her lover in truth, they would have greeted one another with a passionate kiss at the door. She would have pulled him inside by the lapels of his coat and pressed herself up against him, and caressed his shoulders as he put his hands on the small of her back, bending her backwards. “I donated the rest to the hospital.” 

“That was kind of you, on both counts.” Riza finally looks away from the roses. Red roses. Even she knows what those signify. 

She turns on the radio to provide some background noise for any conversation they have, and then goes to the kitchen to bring Roy his cup of tea. Riza’s fingers brush his when she hands it to him. Every nerve in her body is sensitized, alert, and not because of him. She’s searching for Pride, for any trace of his malevolent presence, any hint that they are being watched and listened to, and she finds nothing.

They are safe, she thinks. Still, Riza leads Roy to the sofa instead of the table, and they sit beside one another at perhaps less distance than they should.  _ Better safe than sorry,  _ she tells herself. 

“Where did you go today?” Roy asks, after taking a gulp of his tea and wincing at how hot it is. “East City?”

“Cecil.” Riza hesitates. “I wanted to visit my mother. It wasn’t a planned trip.”

“Ah.” Roy glances at her out of the corner of his eye. “I went to see Hughes earlier today. Was your visit helpful?” 

He says all of this so normally, so naturally, as if she told him she went to visit Havoc at the hospital. Of course Roy, of all people, would never judge her for making a seven-hour round trip by train in order to spend an hour sitting by her mother’s grave and talking to her. Riza restrains the temptation to lean into him and wrap her arms around him. 

“It was,” Riza replies. She curls both of her hands around her mug of tea instead. It occurs to her, with a bittersweet pang, that maybe she should have told Mother about Roy too. “Very much so.”

Maybe she’ll have something more to tell her, next time she visits. 

“I’m glad.” The words are so kind, so genuine. Roy smiles at her softly, and it is the most beautiful sight Riza has seen in months. 

She averts her eyes, feeling her cheeks warm with a blush. Riza taps her finger on the side of her mug twice, signaling to him that she’s ready to begin their coded communication.

Roy notes the gesture, but doesn’t reciprocate it. He takes a careful sip of his tea. “I meant what I said on the phone,” he murmurs. “I didn’t come over here to discuss work. I just wanted to see you.”

Riza wouldn’t have thought twice about the words a few months ago. They are one another’s closest friends; of course Roy would want to see her after weeks of minimal contact. Even as things stand now, knowing what she knows, she is moved by the sentiment in a way that goes deeper than any romantic affection she holds for him. 

“I’ve felt the same way,” Riza admits. It isn’t like her to be so open with him. She justifies it by thinking,  _ this is something I’d say to any of my friends, if I were kept from them for over a month. _ She stares straight ahead, at a point on the wall, because that seems safer.

Roy is silent for a little while, and the confession hangs between them. The only sound comes from the radio. Histories and Mysteries, which plays every Saturday night from nineteen-hundred to twenty-hundred hours. 

“I saw that you were wearing cosmetics on Friday in the mess hall,” he notes. “You don’t normally do that. I thought you might have had a restless night.”

He knows her so well. Riza gives him a grateful smile. They will have to speak subtly, but she knows he will pick up on her meaning. “You’re right. I didn’t sleep well.”

Roy frowns, and Riza knows he already connected the dots between her sleepless night on Thursday with the message she gave him on Friday afternoon. “Anything I should know about?”

“You’re sweet to worry, but it was just work stress that kept me up.”

“Your wrists are bruised.” Roy’s voice is barely audible, and she can hear the anger creeping into his tone. “And your neck. You have a cut on your face, too. Are you sure you’re all right?”

Riza tugs the collar of her white button-down sleeping shirt up a little self-consciously. “I got roughed up a bit during a spar at the new combat center I’ve joined. I won’t allow it to happen again.” 

(Bold words. There is nothing she can do if Pride decides to toy with her again, pinning her in place, restraining her at the ankles, the wrists, the neck.)

Roy sets his mug down on the table too hard, tensing up, and it is evident how sorely his self-control is being tested. Riza shifts uneasily. It unsettles her when he gets like this; when she can practically feel him seething with barely repressed fury. 

He runs a hand through his hair and then sits up straighter. He turns to her, and forces a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “If they’re not more careful about protecting their patrons, they’ll be shut down. I’ll submit an inquiry myself, if I have to.”

“I’m sure that’s not necessary, sir,” Riza says firmly. She holds his gaze.  _ Don’t do anything stupid, Colonel. _

“Fine.” Roy reaches out, and comes just short of brushing his fingers against the bruise on her right wrist. “I can heal these for you, if you want. It would be pretty basic medical alchemy. I’ve been healing bruises since I was at the Academy.”

Riza freezes at the suggestion. She has never contemplated the thought of alchemy of any sort being used on her body again. Not since that night in East City. The snap of Roy’s fingers, and all that came in the instant afterward. The searing agony and the smell of burning flesh. Instinct makes her cringe away from the idea. 

“No, thank you,” Riza declines, as politely as she can. She wipes her palms on the soft fabric of her dark pants. “I don’t want to inconvenience you. Your gloves wouldn’t work for this. You’d have to draw a transmutation circle.”

“It’s not an inconvenience at all. I--” Roy stops, and stares at a fixed spot on the floor. “I want to do something to help you. Please.”

And Riza understands why it is so important to him. Roy had been powerless to stop the Fuhrer from taking her as a hostage. He had been powerless to stop Pride from terrorizing her. And the last time he had used alchemy on her, it had been to maim, not to heal. It must be cruel for him to live with every one of those things. Especially considering what she means to him. 

“All right,” Riza allows. She almost stammers on the words. 

Roy takes out his journal and a pen from an inner pocket of his coat. He opens his journal to a blank page, sketches a quick transmutation circle, and rests it on the coffee table in front of them. 

Riza pulls up the sleeves of her shirt, fully revealing the livid bruises on both of her wrists, and she hears her Colonel’s quick intake of breath. He almost reaches out toward her, but he waits, letting her come to him. She angles herself toward Roy, holding both of her wrists out stiffly. 

“This won’t hurt,” Roy assures her, and Riza knows that he has realized the depths of her apprehension. “Your skin will tingle, and it’ll be over in a couple of seconds. That’s it.”

Riza tucks a lock of hair behind her ear, moved by the reassurance. “I trust you,” she says, simply, honestly. (She trusts him, just as she always has.) 

Roy looks at her as if he wants to say something in reply. He directs his attention to her wrists instead, and very gently takes her right wrist between both of his hands. He is careful not to apply pressure, and Riza doesn’t flinch. He closes his eyes for a moment in concentration, and the bruises slowly fade from her skin. If Roy hadn’t warned her about the slight sense of pins and needles, she may not have even noticed it. 

Roy releases her, and Riza rotates her wrist, amazed. The tenderness is completely gone.

“How does that feel?” Roy asks, watching her test her range of motion. 

“It’s perfect.” 

He repeats the process on her left wrist. This time, Riza is more aware of how strangely intimate it is to have Roy touching her like this (fingers brushing the insides of her wrist, his palm warm against her skin) than of any sensation related to alchemy. 

Roy releases her, appearing satisfied by his work. Then he indicates her neck and face. “Do you want me to…” 

“Oh.” Riza hadn’t expected that, but she supposes it makes sense. There would be no reason to stop her healing halfway. “Should I clip my hair up, or undo the top button of my shirt?”

She makes the offer sound as professional and detached as she can, in the same manner her physician very professionally requests that she undress during her annual physical. Roy still turns red. “No, that’s fine.”

Riza remains very still as Roy rests his hands on either side of her neck. It occurs to her that if almost anyone else had tried such a thing, even in a medical context, she would have instinctively shied away. Her physician has done this on occasion, and she has always gone rigid, like an animal prepared to strike.

She is close enough to Roy that she can breathe in the spicy scent of his aftershave; the cedar scent of his shampoo. Riza closes her eyes and begins counting to ten in Drachman in an attempt to distract herself. 

It’s over in just a couple of seconds. “I’m going to heal your face now,” Roy informs her, withdrawing. “It’s a cut, not a bruise, so that pins and needles feeling will be more pronounced.”

Riza nods her acknowledgement. Roy cups her face in one hand, his fingertips skimming along the slash on her right cheekbone. She feels the sliced skin seal itself up, and she shivers.

“There,” Roy says quietly, pulling back, studying her. “Perfect.”

There is nothing lustful about the look, or the comment. There is warmth, but not heat, and it is such a sharp contrast to how other men - even the ones who were fond of her - have spoken to her and looked at her. 

On impulse, before she can think better of it, Riza leans in and presses a kiss to Roy’s cheek. It is already an unforgivable lapse, but she keeps it as platonic as she can nevertheless, refusing to let the kiss linger. She doesn’t want to kindle something here. She doesn’t want to invite him to do anything more. All she wants, all she really wants, is to show him how deeply she appreciates his kindness. How deeply she has missed him. Roy’s shoulders stiffen, and he draws in a small, short breath, as if he’s just touched a hot stove.

“Thank you,” Riza says. She rises to her feet in a quick movement, gathering their empty tea cups and taking them to the kitchen. Black Hayate looks at her knowingly from his spot on his dog bed, as if he understands exactly what she is doing (beating a hasty retreat.)

Riza rinses the tea cups, taking the few moments to gather herself. She hears Roy’s footsteps, and turns to see him leaning against the doorframe at the entrance to the kitchen. “Anytime,” he replies. His tone is casual, though he’s still rather red in the face. “Sometimes I think I should try to teach myself some more advanced medical alchemy, just in case of an emergency. It’s quite tricky, though.”

Riza dries her hands on the kitchen towel. “I don’t think it would be much of a challenge for the second-youngest State Alchemist in history.” 

Roy deflates at that. “You know, that doesn’t have the same ring to it as the  _ youngest _ State Alchemist in history.”

“I don’t think Edward knows any medical alchemy,” Riza teases. “I’m sure it would be something for you to hold over his head the next time we see him.”

Roy grins at the joke. “That kid better stop growing. If he’s taller than me the next time we see him, I’m never going to hear the end of it.”

“One could argue you deserve that, after all the times you’ve bullied him for his height,” Riza points out. “It’s reckless, antagonizing someone who hasn’t stopped growing. He could end up being as tall as Major Armstrong, and that’ll be the end of things for you.”

Roy grimaces at the thought, and Riza can’t hold back a small laugh. She can’t remember the last time she laughed, and it is unfamiliar and delightful. Roy regards her with the same fond look he had given her earlier, and shifts from foot to foot. “I could stay until you go to sleep,” he offers. “I thought you might find it easier to fall asleep if you weren’t alone.”

Black Hayate barks from the living room, as if offended. This time, both of them burst into laughter. “Sorry, Second Lieutenant,” Roy calls. 

Riza remembers every time she has curled up in bed at night, unable to sleep; every time she has woken up in the middle of the night, gasping and crying out from the nightmares. Nightmares of Ishval, and Scar, and Father, and Shou and Nina Tucker. More recently, nightmares of Hughes, Gluttony, Lust, Pride, and Wrath. Every time, she wipes the sweat and tears from her face, and eases herself back down into bed, shaking. And part of her wished that she could have the person she loved most, the person who gave her the most comfort, near her. 

Riza looks at Roy, and she wonders if he has wished the same, on nights that he can’t sleep. 

“That would be nice.” Riza keeps her voice steady. “Thank you.”

She goes to the sofa, and curls up in her favorite spot, on the far right side against the armrest. She pulls the throw blanket draped over the back of the sofa over herself, as Roy settles in on the opposite end of the sofa from her. He opens his journal again and begins to write, his pen scratching on the paper. Black Hayate comes to sit at her feet. The radio is still playing, transitioning from Histories and Mysteries to the next show for the night, Modern Love. 

Riza drapes her arm over the rest and leans against it. She closes her eyes. She remembers waking up fifteen hours ago, bereft and shattered by grief. Visiting her mother bought her immeasurable solace, and Roy had shown up on her doorstep and given her just as much comfort. 

For the first time in a long time, Riza falls asleep feeling safe, and loved.

* * *

_ to be continued _

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am sorry for how ridiculously long this chapter was! As always, thank you so much to everybody who left comments and kudos on the previous chapter - I love reading them. 
> 
> A few notes, in no particular order--
> 
> I loved exploring Riza's character in this chapter, from her scene with Ed, to her resolve in the face of fear with Pride, and her emotions around grief and her mother. 
> 
> I enjoyed writing how Riza went through a period of time of struggling with intense anger, due to her circumstances. Wrath, one could call it. :) Previous chapters have made it clear that Roy is "the angry one" and Riza is a calming, centering influence on him, but I find it interesting to explore how anger plagues Riza as well. She handles it in a very different way than Roy does. 
> 
> I found it really interesting how, in the manga, Roy asks Riza to go get a bite to eat with him during the scene where they're in the mess hall together! That was not in the anime. 
> 
> The scene where Riza visits her mother is my favorite scene thus far in the fic; I cried while writing it. It was powerful to me to write that whole segment where Riza goes back to her hometown. It reminded me of writing the first chapter, and all the struggles and growth that Riza has been through as she's grown up. The fic started with her at five and she's now twenty-six; we've covered twenty-one years of her life and I feel very close to her. 
> 
> Notes specifically for the scene with Riza and Roy at the end--
> 
> Roy legit plucked out all the red roses to give to Riza, before donating the rest of the flowers to the hospital. 
> 
> I know we don't see Roy exhibiting a talent for medical alchemy in canon, but I like to think that he picked up basic medical alchemy at the military academy - healing bruises and small cuts and lacerations - with the goal of using it for rudimentary field medicine. 
> 
> Riza and Roy's relationship is really entering some new ground here, despite Riza's best efforts to keep things professional. She is really, really in love with Roy, and emotions are running high (even higher than before) due to the way they're missing each other. 
> 
> Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it! I would love to know what you thought. Comments are always treasured.
> 
> I am also on tumblr @lantur if you would like to connect. :)


	13. interlude

Roy spends thirty minutes immersed in encoding notes from the date he went on earlier tonight with Catherine. He is pleased with how much information he retained, though it had been difficult to focus during dinner. He called Riza an hour before leaving to check in on her, and received no answer. The apprehension started curling around him then.  _ She’s probably walking Black Hayate, or out for a run, or taking a shower,  _ Roy told himself, burying his misgivings. 

He called again forty-five minutes later, just before stepping out, expecting to hear her voice on the other end of the line. The phone rang ten times before he finally hung up. 

So part of him listened to Catherine attentively tonight, committing her words to memory. The rest of his mind was lost to worry, churning up nightmare scenarios of Riza lying motionless, crumpled on the floor of her apartment, blood pooling underneath her.

Roy tried to tell himself that would never happen. No one could ever hurt Riza like that. Not even Gluttony had managed to ambush her. But then he remembered her as she had been the previous day at lunch in the mess hall - a vicious slash marring her cheekbone, livid bruises mottling the skin underneath the collar and cuffs of her uniform coat. The memory filled him with cold fear.

He dropped Catherine off after dinner, practically ran up the stairs to his apartment, and called Riza again the moment he entered. His fingers had been clumsy with impatience as he dialed her line. The phone rang twice, and Roy’s chest clenched up with an unspeakable dread. He groped around at the many inner pockets of his coat, searching for the spare keys to her apartment. 

Then Riza answered, in that familiar, sweet voice of hers.  _ Hello?  _ she asked, sounding none the worse for wear at all, and he nearly collapsed with relief. 

Roy looks up from his notes mid-sentence, intending to check on her. His pen stills on the page. 

His Lieutenant is sound asleep, curled up on the sofa. Her arm lies draped over the sofa’s armrest, her face resting against her arm. Her features, normally always set in that expression of calm focus, are utterly relaxed. 

Roy has watched over his Lieutenant as she rested twice before. Once, seven years ago, after he burned the Flame Alchemy array off her back in East City. The second time had been this past spring, after the horrid incident with Shou and Nina Tucker. Riza had cried in his office, and after comforting her, he ordered her to get some rest. Roy looked up from his paperwork twenty minutes later and found her asleep in a position much like this one, worn out from their hellish morning.

Both times, Riza’s face had been flushed and streaked with tears. Pain and sorrow were written all over her, even as she slept. The sight filled him with helpless, aching frustration. Both times, Roy longed to do something, anything, to ease her burdens; to give her some comfort and solace. 

(Last time, he stood up, picked his coat up from where he had tossed it over his chair, and covered Riza with it instead. He stood over her for just a moment and wondered if he would ever get to see her rest easy, content and at peace.)

Roy closes his journal and sets down his pen, ceasing all pretense of carrying on with his work. At least he had finally been able to do something for Riza tonight. After all these years, he has finally been able to give back a fraction of the succor she has always given him. 

The radio continues to play softly in the background. Black Hayate has dozed off at Riza’s feet. Roy sits and watches over her, and it is so bittersweet, because he has dreamed of this a thousand times. Every night that he has sat in solitude in his apartment with his journal, writing out his plans for the future, he has wished that he didn’t have to do this alone. He wished for Riza beside him, his constant companion for the evening, as she is during the day. He ate his boxes of takeout while standing in the kitchen, and drank a glass of wine (or a few) and thought about how nice it would be to share dinners and conversations with her.  _ She would insist on us sitting down,  _ Roy thought wryly,  _ and using plates and proper silverware.  _

He returned to the sofa after dinner, picking up his journal again. Out of the corner of his eye, he could almost imagine Riza curled up near him, absorbed in her own work.

It has taken seven years for them to have a moment like this. Roy hopes, with every fiber of his being, that it won’t take years for them to do this again. 

The radio show comes to an end, and the late-night news broadcast begins at the top of twenty-two hundred hours. Riza mumbles something inaudible, but doesn’t stir otherwise. Roy tears his gaze away from her with difficulty. 

He should go. He offered to stay with her until she fell asleep, and she is sound asleep now. Roy stands reluctantly, takes one step toward the door, and then hesitates, looking back toward his Lieutenant. It doesn’t seem right to just leave her on the sofa. He has fallen asleep on the sofa enough times to know that her neck will be stiff tomorrow, her muscles sore, if she spends the entire night like this. Riza’s weeks are long and exhausting enough. She doesn’t deserve to lose a valuable day of respite from the Fuhrer to entirely preventable discomfort.

Roy approaches her. Black Hayate wakes, tilting his head to the side and watching him unblinkingly, Riza’s silent guardian. 

“It’s all right,” Roy whispers, feeling slightly foolish for explaining his intentions to a dog. “I’m just going to take her to bed.”

He lifts Riza up, supporting her with one arm behind her back and the other underneath her knees. He moves gingerly, careful not to wake her. (This would certainly be awkward to explain if he did, and he has the uncomfortable feeling that he has been awkward enough tonight.) She is a solid, reassuring weight in his arms, as Roy carries her down the hallway toward her bedroom. Riza turns her face against his chest, her bangs falling across her eyes, but she doesn’t wake. 

(He has envisioned carrying Riza to bed many, many times. This is not at all what he pictured. But there is something strangely domestic about it, something that assuages a craving he hadn’t realized was so sharp, so acute, and Roy realizes he is going to be thinking about this for a long time.)

He settles her down onto the bed, and his arms immediately feel empty for the lack of her. Riza mumbles something again and turns on her side, toward him. She reaches out, as if reaching for him, but her fingers close around a handful of her blanket instead.

Roy looks down at his Lieutenant. It takes every fragment of self-restraint he has to not smooth her hair away from her face, to not lean down and press a kiss to her forehead. He puts his hands in the pockets of his coat, resisting the temptation to touch her, to kiss her. (It is harder and harder to resist, these days, and that is something to be wary of.)

He should go. Riza is settled in for the night. He has no excuse to stay any longer.

Roy sits on the edge of the bed, beside her. He keeps his hands in his pockets and does not brush her bangs out of her eyes. But he can’t take his eyes off her. 

(It isn’t even that she sleeps in one of his shirts. In all these years of being lonely and single and entirely in love with his Lieutenant, Roy has devoted too much time to imagining what Riza wears at night. Even in his wildest fantasies, he never imagined her sleeping in his clothes.) 

It is Riza’s face that he can’t stop staring at. Her dark eyelashes, such a contrast to her blonde hair. The incredibly light dusting of freckles across her cheekbones. The shape of her lips, and the way they curve in that tiny smile, when the mood takes her. 

Roy rests his hand just beside where hers lies on the blanket. He thinks that he would like to do this every night. Work alongside one another until it grows late, and carry Riza to bed, if she falls asleep over her paperwork. To their bed, in the home that they share.

(He knows, too well, the reality of the home where she grew up. The years of solitude and neglect; Riza cooking alone in the kitchen, tending to the vegetable garden on her own, sitting at the kitchen table by herself, working through her assignments for school. She spent the twelve years after her mother passed in a so-called home without happiness, without warmth.) 

He would give her something completely different. A bright, cheerful home, with plenty of light streaming in through the windows. Their home would have a big backyard for Black Hayate, and a large study and library for the two of them to work together. A spacious kitchen would be nice too. He would help Riza cook dinner every night, so that she never had to bear that burden alone again. 

Roy imagines the two of them sitting down to dinner in the evenings. In his mind’s eye, this impossible dream of a future that can never be, they aren’t alone. He thinks of a girl with blonde hair like her mother’s, and a boy with dark hair and eyes. (For some reason, Cintra and Maes are fifteen or sixteen, around Fullmetal’s age.)

Roy closes his eyes for a moment, running a hand through his hair. The strangest thing is, he doesn’t even particularly  _ like  _ children. He never thought he wanted them. He used to listen to Hughes go on and on about Elicia and her milestones (sitting up, rolling over, standing up, taking her first steps) and while he appreciated that Elicia was healthy and developing normally, he’d found Hughes’s fascination a little incomprehensible. 

But it hadn’t taken him long to realize how Riza felt about children. She immediately took Fullmetal and Alphonse under her wing, and befriended  _ their  _ friend, Edward’s automail mechanic, Winry Rockbell. Fullmetal and Alphonse’s sojourns to East City Command have always been marked by lunches out and even picnics with Riza. ( _ Come and get lunch with me,  _ Roy would ask her.  _ We can walk to that place you like for lobster rolls.  _ She would shake her head in response.  _ No can do, Colonel. I’m taking Edward and Alphonse to the food trucks at Trettach Park today. _

More than a few times, Riza has even sent Fullmetal and Alphonse off on particularly long train journeys with a discreetly wrapped box of home-cooked lunch. Roy always glowered at this, masking his envy. Meanwhile, Fullmetal gave him the most obnoxious, smug grins while Riza’s back was turned.) 

Riza met Ling Yao and his bodyguard, Lan Fan, and earned their trust and respect within less than twelve hours. And in happier times, when Roy had taken her to visit Hughes, Gracia, and Elicia with him, whenever they were in Central together for work - Riza would hold Elicia in her lap, or Elicia would sit between them and cuddle up against Riza’s side. The way Riza looked at him, then, when she held Elicia in her arms--

Roy almost chokes. He can’t bear to think of it. 

(Her quiet longing wasn’t obvious. It wouldn’t have even been remotely noticeable, to anyone beside him. But Roy has known Riza since she was a girl of twelve. Even at sixteen, he knew, he understood, what she felt. He has always known.)

Roy forces himself to rise to his feet. His throat is tight, and the beginnings of a headache throb behind his temples. He can recognize this as the urge to cry, another temptation he almost never gives in to.

He looks down at Riza, still peacefully asleep. He hopes that she sleeps well; that she wakes tomorrow fortified by the rest. The fact that she traveled so far to visit her mother today speaks volumes about how emotionally depleted she must have been.

Roy removes his coat. He carefully drapes it around Riza like a blanket. It is sentimental and unnecessary - she has a perfectly good blanket here that he could pull over her, and she has a matching black overcoat of her own now as well. He ordered it for her as an end-of-year gift a few years ago.

_ Sentimental, maybe,  _ Roy thinks.  _ But not unnecessary.  _ He wants Riza to have something of his that she can hold on to, in his absence.

Roy does not brush her bangs out of her eyes and kiss her on the forehead.

He leaves, with one look back. He finds Black Hayate in the living room and kneels beside the dog, petting the soft fur on his head. Black Hayate nuzzles against his palm. 

“Take good care of her, all right?” Roy asks. “I’m counting on you, Second Lieutenant.”

Black Hayate gives a quiet  _ ruff  _ of acknowledgement and wags his tail.

Roy returns home, alone.

* * *

_to be continued_

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed this little insight into Roy's point of view. :) I would love to hear what you think of it, and the next chapter is up as well!


	14. thirteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Important note: Excerpts of the dialogue and events in this chapter are taken from the manga and Brotherhood; they are not original content.

Riza wakes up peacefully, gradually, which is unusual for her. She takes a deep breath, drawing in the familiar, comforting scent of smoke and cedar. She nuzzles against it, her fingers closing around a handful of fine, heavy wool, lined with sleek silk. Then her eyes open. 

The last thing she remembers is sitting on the sofa with Roy the previous night, curling up against the armrest, Black Hayate at her feet. The radio was playing, and Roy sat on the other side of the sofa from her, writing in his journal. She is alone now, stretched out on her bed. Black Hayate lies beside her, and Roy’s coat is draped over her like a blanket. 

Riza sits up, the memories of the previous day filtering back to her. Visiting her mother in Cecil, and her evening with Roy. She nudges Roy’s coat aside, looking down at her wrists. The skin there is pale, her summer tan faded, as well as the livid bruises that have marred her wrists for the past two days. The healed skin confirms that none of it had been a dream. Her Colonel visited her last night, brought her roses, and healed her injuries with his alchemy. He sat with her until she fell asleep. 

Riza reaches up, brushing her fingers against her cheek. The skin there is intact too, the slice vanished. Her skin warms with a flush at the memory of what she’d done the previous night; the way she boldly leaned in and kissed Roy on the cheek to express her gratitude.

Riza buries her face in her hands, and then rakes her fingers through her hair.  _ You can’t have it both ways,  _ she chastises herself, red-faced with shame and anger.  _ You can’t tell yourself that you need to keep some degree of separation for professional reasons, and then encourage him by reciprocating his attentions.  _

She knows that. It is as clear as day to her. What she should do is rebuff Roy entirely, for both of their sakes, but Riza balks at the thought. 

She rises, makes the bed neatly, and pulls the curtains open, allowing the late autumn sunlight to stream into her bedroom. Black Hayate yawns and stretches on the bed, before wriggling into a beam of sunlight. Riza goes to him, and tenderly strokes the soft fur on his head.

She has allowed herself only the bare minimum of personal indulgences, as penance for the part she played in Ishval. Adopting Black Hayate was one of them. Companionship with Rebecca, her unit, and Grumman, is the other. She has come to terms with the fact that she will never see her most personal desire, for marriage and children, realized. The only dreams for the future that she can and will ever pursue are rebuilding Ishval and reforming Amestris. 

Roy has made it clear to her that he has made his choice. That he wants to restore Ishval and alter the political structure of Amestris - and he wants her, too. The thought of her feelings being reciprocated is still jarring, though she has had weeks to come to terms with it. 

Obviously, they would never be able to have anything more than a covert affair. Riza sighs, sitting on the edge of the bed, beside Black Hayate. She can’t believe she is even deliberating over such a thing. It would be dangerous politically for Roy to engage in such behavior once he becomes Fuhrer, and it would jeopardize both of their military careers if they were caught before then. 

_ Would it, though?  _ Riza muses, scratching behind Black Hayate’s ear absentmindedly. There have been rumors about the two of them for years. The rumors have grown stronger since their transfer to Central and the unit’s disbanding - but there have been whispers even before that, while they were stationed in East City. It hasn’t affected either of their careers. Roy still received his promotion to Colonel, and she still received hers to First Lieutenant. 

For all these years, she has known that Roy, like her, wanted nothing more in life than to supplant the Fuhrer, reform Amestris, and work to make reparations to the surviving Ishvalans. That was part of the reason she had fallen so deeply in love with him. The strength of his convictions. His single-minded dedication. 

Others have seen what is wrong with this country and advocated for change. Off the top of her mind, Riza can name fifteen university professors that have lost their tenure and their positions over the past seven years for their criticism of Amestrian foreign and domestic policy, and Fuhrer Bradley’s regime. Some of their fellow soldiers in the military have awakened to the truth, as well. High-ranking officers, like Grumman, Major General Armstrong, and Brigadier General Hall. The rank and file, including Roy’s old unit that he commanded in Ishval, still stationed at East City Command, and the surviving members of Sniper Team Seven, at the Southern Command Center. (From what she has heard, Roy’s old unit in East City and her former sniper team have both made connections with other infantry soldiers and snipers who served in Ishval, who share similar, quiet reservations about what Amestrian forces did there.) 

But it was Roy who took that quiet distrust and distaste for the government and committed himself to direct action. It was Roy who looked at the corrupt structure, years before the reveal of the existence of the homunculi, and said,  _ This has to be burned down. This has to be replaced. That is the only way to ensure what happened in Ishval can never, ever happen again.  _

It was that, more than anything else (more than his razor-sharp intelligence, more than his confidence), that made her admire him so, once she stepped into her position as his Lieutenant. That admiration turned into devotion, and Roy’s moments of kindness and gentleness, his unceasing dedication to protecting his subordinates, his fellow soldiers, and the civilians of Amestris, turned that devotion into love. 

So of course he’s on the same page as her, because they always have been, in this one matter that is more important than all others. Roy must know, like she does, that his future has no room for marriage. They can never allow anything that lies between them to distract from their goals. From the ultimate reality of where their path has to end, when their work is complete. All they can ever be to one another is an occasional, clandestine source of respite and comfort. 

_ Maybe there isn’t anything wrong with that, if we’re very careful about it. And if we remember where and how everything has to end.  _ Riza watches the wind tear the leaves from the trees, sending them skittering down the sidewalk. She wraps her arms around herself. Her skin tingles at the thought of what she has dreamed of for so long becoming a reality. 

Still, this isn’t the time. Perhaps when all of this is over, after Roy is installed as Fuhrer, they can indulge themselves a little - practicing the utmost discretion, of course. But they can’t afford distractions now. Giving in now, as tempting as that may be, will spark a flame that will consume them both. 

(They have seven years to make up for, after all. Seven long years. Riza tries not to think about the many, many ways they would make up for that lost time.)

Riza dresses for the day, and carefully hangs Roy’s coat on the coat rack by the door. She takes Black Hayate out for a walk, before making herself some spiced vanilla tea and an egg sandwich. She walks to the phone, temporizes for a moment, and then picks it up, dialing Roy’s number. It rings five times, indicating that he probably isn’t awake yet, despite the fact that it’s near ten-hundred hours. 

“Hello?” Roy asks, his voice raspy with sleep. 

Riza imagines him, his hair in disarray, blinking drowsily. “Good morning, Colonel.”

“Lieutenant.” Roy perks up. “Did you sleep well?”

“I had a restful night.” It’s true, Riza realizes. She slept all the way through the night, without a single nightmare, for the first time in a long time. She is restored on every level - physically, mentally, and emotionally. Energized, and as close to being her old self as she’s felt in months. Calm, composed, and focused. Ready to start thinking about how to tear Wrath and Pride apart, instead of just surviving them. 

She smiles at the phone. “You left your coat here, though. You must be missing it. Should I bring it to your office tomorrow?”

“I’m busy tomorrow during the day,” Roy replies nonchalantly. “But I can come to your place next Friday evening and pick it up. Call me when you’re home from work, and don’t worry about cooking dinner. I’ll pick up something for both of us on the way.” 

Riza’s pulse quickens. They can take advantage of the time to discuss their next steps. In code, of course, as a precaution against surveillance by Pride or any other external forces. “Yes, sir. Have a good day.”

“You too, Lieutenant.”

Riza hangs up the phone. A frisson of nerves runs through her. It is perilous for them to meet like this, even under the guise of seeing one another for personal reasons. Both of their phone lines are almost certainly under surveillance, meaning the Fuhrer will be aware of their meetings. (And their physical movements may be surveilled as well. Riza has been trying to determine whether she is being tailed by any of the Fuhrer’s covert operatives during her evenings and weekends away from Central Command, but so far her investigation into the matter has been inconclusive.) 

It remains to be seen whether Bradley will let this pass, if he’s operating under the assumption that she and Roy are seeing one another for purposes other than conspiring against him. As long as neither she or her Colonel make any open moves against Pride, Wrath, and the government, they should be safe. 

It’s a risk, yes. But it will be a hundred times harder for Roy to plan the insurrection on his own. Besides, part of her duty as his Lieutenant is to ensure that he never has to shoulder his burdens alone.

-

Night falls. After Black Hayate’s evening walk and her own dinner, Riza sits on the sofa and writes in her notebook, making detailed, encoded notes of what she wants to discuss with her Colonel next Friday. There is no way that their unit alone, as skilled as they are, can accomplish an entire takeover of Central Command themselves. (They wouldn’t have even been able to pull it off when Havoc was serving alongside them.) 

They will need reinforcements from East City Command. Ideally, from either Southern Command or Fort Briggs as well, depending on which of their allies at the north or south will be able to mobilize for them. Riza twirls her pencil through her fingers (a habit picked up from Roy) and considers how she, Breda, and Fuery can proceed with safely deserting their posts, when the time is right. 

She curls her hands into fists, trying to warm them in the sleeves of her sweater. There is a chill in the air, one that bites through her pink sweater and her soft, dark pants. Her apartment building hasn’t turned the heat on for the season yet. She glances at Roy’s coat. 

After another half hour of work, Riza stands and goes to the coat rack. She pulls on Roy’s coat, blushing like a schoolgirl. It’s slightly too long, the hem falling almost to her knees. The sleeves are too long as well. It is as warm as an embrace, and she draws it close around herself, in lieu of having the coat’s owner wrap his arms around her. 

She remembers every time Roy has given this to her, over the years. He has always been such a gentleman about it, offering it to her when she has been cold, or it has been raining outside. Riza stiffens when the first memory returns to her - of being sixteen and weeping, shaking with the force of her tears, after Father collapsed in his study. Even after she finally regained control over herself and stopped sobbing, she hadn’t been able to stop shivering. She wrapped her arms around herself, cold in her thin blazer. 

_ The funeral arrangements-- _

_ I’ll handle all of that as well. Don’t worry about it. _

And Roy had taken off this dark overcoat and given it to her. 

The following day, after the funeral, she made her decision. Riza stands still, thinking back to her terror as she undressed in the bathroom, pulled her blazer on over her bare skin, and rejoined Roy in the library. (She doesn’t normally revisit these memories. She locked these deep down, along with so many others.) 

She was so afraid when she exposed her back to him. She still remembers how she startled when he reached out, brushing a finger against her back, stunned to see the array inked into her skin. 

Roy gave her this coat to lie on while he studied the Flame Alchemy array. When he went downstairs to make her tea, and bring her food, she would pull it on, buttoning it closed over her chest, and wait for him to return. Riza bows her head, tucking her hands into the opposite sleeves. The memories make her ache, all the way down to the bone. That had been ten years ago now. They were so young, so idealistic. 

A few years ago, over drinks at the Molten Rose in East City, after the rest of the unit headed home, Roy confessed to her that he hated himself for encouraging her to think about enlisting. That putting the idea into her head about enlisting, and giving her the phone number for the State Military Academy, was one of the greatest regrets of his life.  _ Do you blame me?  _ Roy asked, not looking up from the liquor in his glass.  _ For influencing you in that way? _

_ No,  _ Riza told him, honestly and without hesitation.  _ Your intentions were good. I know that _ . For as long as she has known him, Roy has only ever tried to look out for her.

Riza returns to the sofa and her notebook. She continues to write until twenty-two hundred hours, at which point she gets ready for bed. She falls asleep still wrapped in the coat. 

-

She and Roy fall into the routine of meeting once every three weeks, always in her apartment, usually late at night. After those first couple of meetings, they never make plans to see one another over the phone, instead setting their next date before Roy leaves her apartment. They spend hours in discussion, staying up until the very early hours of the morning. (Every time, Riza deliberates asking her Colonel if he wants to stay the night, just to sleep, and decides against it.)

Before each visit, Riza performs thorough sweeps of her apartment for surveillance equipment that might have been planted during the day, while she was at work. Her security sweeps come up clear every time. She sits beside Roy on the sofa and they speak in careful code. Formulating these coded messages takes a considerable amount of time, as does decoding them afterwards, but the caution is necessary. 

Riza remains alert and vigilant (her back straight, shoulders rigid, hands clasped tightly in her lap) for reasons that have nothing to do with following their encrypted conversations. She strains to detect the faintest signs of Pride’s malevolent aura, searching for any hint that he has wormed his way into the shadows of her apartment. Time after time, there is no sign of Pride, but she doesn’t allow herself to grow complacent. 

Roy has spent all of his time since the unit’s separation immersed in planning, which does not surprise Riza in the least. He asks her for her thoughts on every aspect of his plans. Which combat units to utilize, where each unit should be placed, troop movement patterns through Central, and targets to prioritize. He asks for her opinion regarding what message of the change in power to send to the public and the rest of the military.

“Thank you for considering my opinion, Colonel,” Riza says, at the end of each of their meetings. It is more of a relief than she can say that he is allowing her in again, welcoming her input, after shutting her out for so long. 

“I didn’t listen to you the last couple of times I planned something, and the consequences were disastrous.” Roy’s expression darkens. “I want this to go much more smoothly.”

“It will,” Riza assures him. She stifles the anxiety that stirs inside her. Because even the most well-executed takeovers of power in Drachma, Aerugo, and Creta, the ones that she and Roy have studied for years, have been far from bloodless. She lies awake at night after each of these meetings with a knot in her chest, unable to dismiss the fear that her entire unit, and Edward and Alphonse, Rebecca and Grumman, may not make it out alive. 

_ I will do everything I can to ensure this party doesn’t incur significant costs,  _ Roy told her, the first time they met to discuss this.  _ But we have to be prepared to take some financial losses.  _

Roy said that, like the brilliant tactician that he is. But his hands clenched into fists, and Riza knew that he couldn’t bear the thought of losing one more person dear to him.

-

Riza is more ill at ease at work once she begins her covert meetings with Roy. Part of her expects the Fuhrer to order her to stop meeting with his political rival after hours. Bradley doesn’t say a word about it. He seems to grow more and more preoccupied as autumn draws to a close and winter approaches. 

Her instincts scream that there is something amiss, and that there must be some reason for the subtle shift in his demeanor. Riza begins to watch him more keenly than she ever has before, seeking to determine any patterns in his comings and goings from the office and the presidential manor. She tries to find patterns in who he is meeting with, and in the work he has been doing. Despite her position as his assistant, Bradley keeps her at a distance from most of his activities, frustrating her attempts at discerning what he is up to. 

Earlier in autumn, this would have vexed her to the point of wanting to scream. Now, Riza makes herself think back to her chess games with Grandfather and with Roy. Nobody plays without missteps, not even grandmasters like Grumman. One single misstep can cost a person the game. She will stay vigilant, and perhaps Bradley will grow careless. Being a homunculus does not make these creatures infallible. Gluttony was deceived by Roy’s decoy in the forest, allowing them to escape. Lust left Roy for dead, a mistake that cost her life. If and when Bradley slips up, she will be ready.

This is what is on Riza’s mind as she prepares the Fuhrer’s afternoon cup of tea, on the sixteenth of December. She pours the hot water from the pot into the cup, watching as the tea steeps, staining the water a deep red. 

The Fuhrer’s voice jolts her out of her reverie. “Lieutenant Hawkeye.” 

“Yes, sir?” Riza prepares herself for an order to stay at the office late tonight. 

“I heard that you know the truth about Selim.” 

Riza fumbles with the tea strainer in her surprise, and she is grateful her back is to him. “I do,” she replies evenly, bracing herself for whatever this conversation will hold. 

“And you know about my true identity as well.” The remark is preternaturally calm.  _ Wrath,  _ Roy called him, but Riza has never seen Fuhrer Bradley express any trace of that emotion. She has watched him intently over these past several weeks, day in and day out. He is equable, focused, polite, and jovial, at times. Still, Riza’s attention often drifts to the long swords mounted on the wall beside his desk, and the display never fails to set her nerves on edge. 

“I do, sir,” she acknowledges now, resenting the honorific on her lips. “Do you plan to kill me, now that I know so much?” 

“No,” Bradley says simply. “I was just curious. What does an ordinary citizen feel, knowing that her country’s leader and his son are homunculi?” 

Riza weighs her reply. A hundred potential responses hover on the tip of her tongue.  _ Fury,  _ she thinks, remembering the night she learned the truth about Bradley.  _ Betrayal.  _

But what lay under that? What lay under that sense of white-hot anger and profound betrayal? 

“I think it’s sad,” Riza admits, giving voice to a sentiment she has never spoken out loud before, not even to her Colonel.  _ Sad  _ is an understatement, she realizes, once the word leaves her. It’s more than sad. It is cruel, and tragic. “That the person we should trust the most is nothing but a sham, as is his family. You’re just playing house, aren’t you? Laughing in the shadows while you pretend to be humans, all the while thinking of us as your unworthy lessers. Pawns in your game.”

Bradley is dangerously silent for several long moments, and Riza almost regrets her candor. She bites the inside of her cheek, refusing to apologize. After everything he has done, she will never owe a creature like him that courtesy.

“Playing house,” Bradley muses. “Indeed. I was given a son to make the game more realistic.” His chair creaks as he stands. “But it doesn’t end with him. I was given everything, Lieutenant. Power, subordinates, and the position of Fuhrer. Playing  _ house  _ is an understatement. Playing  _ nation  _ would be more accurate. Most of my life has been nothing more than an act.”

His tone is strangely matter-of-fact. Almost honest, almost open. Riza tenses, waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

She doesn’t have to wait long. Bradley goes to stand by the rain-washed window, staring out over the city. “But my wife, at least, was of my own choosing.” 

She hadn’t expected that, and Riza turns toward him reflexively, forgetting to mask her surprise. Bradley doesn’t move to acknowledge her, keeping his attention trained on the view out the window. “Is the tea ready yet?”

She’d forgotten the tea, too. “Yes, sir.” Riza places the cup on a saucer, and takes it to him. As much as it embarasses her to admit it, she cherished performing this little daily ritual for Roy. Making the coffee or tea just the way he liked it, and bringing it to him during the time of the afternoon where his focus and alertness were flagging.  _ Thank you, Lieutenant,  _ her Colonel would say, without fail, his fingers brushing hers when he accepted the cup. The small interaction always warmed her. It was one of the few safe ways for her to express her devotion.

It has always felt wrong to do this for Bradley. It would have felt wrong to do this for anyone besides her Colonel. 

The Fuhrer takes a sip, and hums his approval. “That’s delicious. Thank you.” 

Riza nods, suppressing the sudden, unexpected sorrow that washes over her. For all the covert planning that she and Roy have been doing, they have no time frame in mind for when to act. It could be several months, or longer, before they can strike. She still misses him and the rest of her team, every single day. “You’re welcome, sir.”

She retreats, trying to distract herself by turning her attention to the stack of work waiting at her desk. Bradley’s voice stops her dead, as she puts away the teapot. “She’s a clever woman, you know, with a great deal of self-respect. You could learn from her.” 

Riza’s hands still for a moment as she folds up the sachet of tea leaves. “The First Lady, sir?”

Bradley nods his assent, without looking back at her. The implications sink in, like the fangs of a serpent. 

Celine Bradley is a clever woman. A woman who had chosen the right side; chosen to be the First Lady, by the ruler of this country. Celine Bradley is the wife of the Fuhrer-President, adored and respected by all. In Bradley’s eyes, all Riza is, all she will ever be, is the secret mistress of a doomed Colonel. 

Even if -  _ when -  _ their plan unfolds, Riza will never have the luxury that Celine has enjoyed for the past three decades. She will never have the ability to live openly alongside Roy, for the four or five years that will separate his installation as Fuhrer from the initiation of their trials. She will always be his best-kept secret. 

(The thought occurs that it won’t be wise for her to ever stay the night with him.) 

Riza swallows her pain. “I’ve made my choices, sir. I stand by them.” 

“Very well, Lieutenant.” Bradley glances over his shoulder at her. “You’re dismissed.”

-

She meets Roy that night. They settle on the sofa, and discuss their plans over a late dinner. Roy brings a bottle of red wine as well, saying that it would pair nicely with the Cretan chicken pasta that he picked up from Alessandro’s Bistro. Riza limits herself to a quarter of a glass, as there is no need to be excessive. Roy has two glasses. Over dinner, he lets her know, in the circumspect way that marks all of these conversations, that he has had a productive discussion with Major General Armstrong about the involvement of her forces at Fort Briggs.

Riza would have expected triumph, relief, vindication, or all of the above, from him. This is exactly the support they needed. But Roy relays the news without so much as a smile, and his fingers drum a restless rhythm on the armrest. 

“I’m surprised at your demeanor, Colonel,” Riza comments. “I thought you would be happy that your aunt’s friends from abroad will be able to make it to her retirement party. It was so hard for you to get in touch with them. Is everything all right?” 

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to worry you.” Roy refills his glass with wine, and Riza tracks the motion of the pour. 

(Drinking to excess has been a vice of his since returning from Ishval; one that he normally monitors with care. Hughes had helped him in that endeavor, too. There have been several times over the past months that Riza has wondered what impact all of it - Hughes, Havoc, the homunculi, the unit’s separation - has had on that particular habit. She has hesitated to broach the topic with Roy. There are some matters so private, so discomfiting, so closely held, that even they rarely discuss those matters with one another.) 

Roy takes a sip of wine, and then stares down into his glass. Riza remains silent, knowing that he will confide in her when he is ready. When he finally speaks, his voice is barely audible. “I’m having second thoughts.” 

Riza frowns. “About an aspect of the plan?”

“About my own ambition. The one that I expressed to Fuhrer Bradley in early autumn.”

_ The Fuhrer asked me what I would do next. I told him that I wasn’t going to give up my ambition of supplanting him.  _

Riza sets her empty glass on the coffee table. She has never heard Roy reveal the slightest reservation about his aspirations. At twenty-three, he declared that he was going to devote his life to the goal of becoming the Fuhrer-President of Amestris, and that was that. Over these past seven years, he has never strayed from the path he set for himself. 

“Such hesitation is unlike you.” A dozen questions race through Riza’s mind as to why he could possibly have cold feet now. She betrays none of her unease. She’ll hear him out first. 

Roy leans forward, elbows braced on his knees, a hunched, defensive posture. He’s making himself smaller, which is unlike him. He almost always sits or stands up straight, to convey confidence and a commanding air. “Amestris deserves better than me.” The confession is bitter. “The people deserve better than to have me as their leader.” 

Riza blinks, taken aback. “I completely disagree, sir.”

Roy buries his head in his hands for a few moments, and then looks up, staring blankly at the wall. “I’m a mass murderer, Hawkeye. I’ve killed far more people than all of the criminals executed for that act over the past fifty years combined.” He pauses. “I know. I’ve counted.” 

Riza’s breath stutters in her chest. 

“How can I be the Fuhrer, the President, of this country?” Anger edges into Roy’s tone. “Surely the people deserve better than to have a killer as the head of their nation. They deserve someone good, kind, honorable, noble. To go from a homunculus to a murderer is barely any improvement at all. Perhaps I should work to install someone else, like Grumman or Olivier Armstrong.” 

“You’re being unfair to yourself, Colonel,” Riza argues. “You’re being reductive.” 

Roy straightens, and looks her in the eye. “I can’t trust your judgment on this. Our closeness makes you too biased.” 

The accusation stings. “I assure you that I am not blinded by whatever I feel for you personally, sir,” Riza replies stiffly. “I have never allowed, and will never allow, any personal attachment to compromise the agreement we made when I joined this unit. I will always give you an honest assessment of your behavior and your actions, and respond accordingly.”

“Good.” Remorse flickers over her Colonel for an instant. “That’s why I rely on you.” 

Riza looks away from him, her pride still wounded. “I meant what I said. I wouldn’t give you my support if I didn’t think that you would be a good leader.”

A heavy silence falls over them. Roy drains his glass of wine in a long draught. “I keep thinking,” he says, at last, “of how every primary and secondary school in Amestris has to display a framed photograph of the Fuhrer somewhere on the premises of the building. Do you remember that?”

Riza rarely allows herself to think back to those years, but she does remember the small, framed black-and-white photo of Fuhrer Bradley, hung in a corner of her schoolroom. “I do,” she allows. “It’s a ridiculous law. You can strike it from the books.”

A ghost of a smile touches Roy’s lips, there and gone in a fraction of a second. “I keep thinking of Elicia at primary school. Of a photo of the Fuhrer - of  _ me  _ \- in her classroom. I know that one day she, and thousands of children like her, will learn about me in their history classes. How is anybody supposed to explain that to their children? To the future of Amestris? That murder is a capital crime and a sin, but that the President of their country can be a murderer, and that is perfectly all right? It…” 

He gestures, frustrated. “It sends the wrong message. What caliber of person will run for the office of President, when we implement the democratic election system? After three decades of Bradley, after half a decade of  _ me,  _ the country will be conditioned to accept any lowlife criminal into the highest office of the land.”

Riza stares down at her hands, contemplating her Colonel’s words. “I don’t agree,” she says, eventually. “I think it sends a different message entirely.”

“Oh?” Roy challenges. “What would that be?”

Riza looks up at him, and holds his gaze unflinchingly. “It says that none of us are defined by the mistakes we make. We are more than our worst decisions. We are more than our lowest moments. What we have done in the past perhaps matters less than what we choose to do every day going forward. I hope that everybody in this country, young and old, can see that.”

“You’re kind and compassionate, to believe that.” Roy sighs. “I don’t know that I believe it. I wish I could.” 

“I’ve made more than my share of mistakes in the past, Colonel, and shamed and punished myself for every one of them.” Riza fights back the visceral memories of those mistakes. “But I refuse to allow that to define who I am.”

“You made one mistake,” Roy corrects gently. “And that was one I led you into.”

“You encouraged me to enlist, but you didn’t lead me into becoming a sniper. I made that choice myself, knowing what it meant.” Riza exhales. Part of her is terrified, screaming caution after caution. She’s never admitted any of this out loud, to anyone. Not even Rebecca.  __

To her surprise, the rest of her remains unperturbed. Steady. An odd sense of resolve settles over her, quelling the fear. (Maybe, considering everything, Roy deserves to know. Or maybe it’s not that at all. Maybe he doesn’t  _ deserve  _ to know, but she wants him to, anyway.) 

Riza focuses on Black Hayate, curled up in his dog bed, for how he calms her. “When I was in Ishval,” she starts levelly, “I slept with a First Lieutenant on my sniper team.”

She can’t bring herself to look at Roy. 

“Not once. Over a period of months, until it was all over and we were deployed back home.” 

She feels a little lightheaded, and not from the wine. Riza dares a glance at her Colonel. In all the years she has known him, she has never seen Roy look this stunned. She swallows, and continues, looking back at Black Hayate. 

“When I returned to the Academy, I--” The words catch in her throat. “I started an affair with my marksmanship instructor, who was also my academic advisor. We carried that on until I graduated. When I moved to East City, I vowed to myself that it would be a fresh start. That I would never conduct myself in such a manner with a fellow soldier again, let alone one higher-ranking than me.”

Black Hayate hears the strain in her voice. He rises and trots over to her, before jumping up into her lap. Riza wraps her arms around him, grateful for the comfort. She can’t look at Roy again. He is very quiet. In her peripheral vision, she sees that he is very still, as well. She blinks hard. 

“I didn’t,” she says. “I was careful. But I still - it was still…” Riza falters, struggling to find the words for the searing, acute misery and agony, the desperation, the guilt, that plagued her days and nights. “I still hurt. I hurt so much. I was desperate to do anything I could to make myself feel better, if only for a night. I slept with a dozen men, and I didn’t even know any of their last names.”

This entire admission, she thinks, might kill her. It is like driving a scalpel into her own chest, carving through flesh and cracking bone, ripping her heart out and offering it to Roy in her bloody hand. There is no other secret, no other shame, she has carried with her like this one.

“I stopped doing this when I was twenty.” Riza strokes Black Hayate’s head. Her hand trembles. She finally turns to Roy. He’s still staring at her, stunned. 

“I’ve made more than my share of mistakes,” Riza repeats. She can barely hear her own voice. “But I refuse to allow that to define who I am. Please keep that in mind for yourself as well, Colonel.”

She takes a few deep breaths. She runs her hand down Black Hayate’s back. He is warm. His fur is soft. She can feel his heart beating. 

“You were seventeen when you were deployed to Ishval,” Roy says quietly. “Eighteen when the war ended and you went back to the Academy to complete your final semester.”

Something in Roy’s tone rubs her nerves raw. And something inside her clenches up, preparing for his judgment. (Because of course he would judge her. What person wants to hear that someone they have feelings for has fucked two military units’ worth of men?) 

Riza inclines her head once. “Yes.” 

Roy stands up so quickly that Black Hayate startles, grabbing his coat from where he had thrown it over the back of the sofa. “I am going to kill both of them,” he says under his breath, his right hand twitching convulsively. “I am going to make them wish that they never touched you.”

The threats are unsettling coming from him, more than they would be from anyone else. Because they aren’t empty threats or a display of bravado. Because Riza has seen, in excruciating detail, what Roy is capable of. How vicious, how frightening, he can be. He is her Colonel, her love, intelligent and kind, but she rarely forgets that he is also the most powerful and destructive alchemist alive. 

She only heard this kind of fury from him once before, after Hughes’ murder.  _ I am going to find whoever is responsible for this, and I promise you, for Hughes’ sake, for Gracia and Elicia’s sake - I will fucking bury them.  _

His rage is disturbing now as it had been then, and Riza stands immediately. “Colonel, stop this right now,” she orders, moving to block his path. “You’re not going anywhere. This behavior is not productive or constructive.” 

Roy glares at her. “Stand aside, Lieutenant,” he commands, through gritted teeth. “Both of them should have faced the consequences for their actions years ago. They’re going to face them now.”

“I refuse to do that,” Riza snaps. “You’re being ridiculous. It was my choice, on both counts. I initiated it. I allowed it to happen, over and over again. I knew what I was doing, and I conducted myself poorly. If you want to be angry at anyone, be angry at me.”

“No.” Roy runs a slightly shaking hand through his hair, seething. “No, I will not. You were the subordinate, Hawkeye. You were a  _ cadet.  _ They both had responsibilities, as your senior officers, to have some self-control. Regardless of whatever they wanted from you, or you wanted from them. They did wrong by you.”

Riza shakes her head. Her eyes burn with tears. “It wasn’t like that. It helped me,” she insists. “It got me through the most difficult time of my life.”

“No.” Roy looks aside, as if he can’t bear to face her. “There were other ways to help that didn’t involve taking advantage of a vulnerable subordinate.”

“Colonel--” Riza breaks off and glances skyward, searching for strength. “It wasn’t easy for me to tell you any of this. Please don’t make me regret it.”

She turns away, fighting the urge to wrap her arms around herself. She has become accustomed to Roy’s temper, over the years. She still hates it. Occasionally, she has had the guilty thought that she would appreciate a partner who was more mild-tempered, someone who she doesn’t have to keep in check. Riza dismisses that thought every time, ashamed it even crossed her mind. 

Behind her, she hears Roy take a step closer. Then his hand comes to rest on her shoulder for just a moment, before he pulls back. “I never want to make you regret anything,” he says softly. “Thank you for confiding in me.”

Riza turns to him. They face one another, less contentiously than before. “Do you judge me for the mistakes I made?” she asks, steeling herself for his response. “Do you think that my actions then define who I am now? Does it change the way you look at me?” 

Roy almost flinches at the question. “No,” he replies at once, and Riza hears the honesty in the answer. “On all counts.”

“Then you should understand why I believe what I do,” Riza says emphatically. “Give yourself the same regard that you give me.”

“That’s impossible,” Roy mutters. He pulls his coat on, drawing it close around himself, as though it were armor. 

Riza’s chest tightens at the implications of his words. “Please try. For me.” She takes a step closer to him. “Every word you said earlier was true - just like what I said to you was true. Still, it’s what you did, what  _ we  _ did, that makes you so dedicated to completely reforming this country. You have a personal commitment to this cause that others who weren’t in Ishval don’t understand, as capable and competent otherwise they may be. Please don’t throw that away on your own doubts, Colonel.”

Roy regards her, visibly torn. Then his expression softens somewhat. “All right. I’ll trust you.” He picks up his scarf from where he had tossed it earlier, winding it around his neck. “I should go. It’s getting late.”

“You can stay, if you want.” It’s the first time she has made him that offer, and Riza speaks the words with uncharacteristic self-consciousness. (Roy said he didn’t judge her for what she confided in him, but--

Tiny, vicious insecurities snap and nip at her, as sharp as Pride’s slash against her cheek. They draw blood, just as Pride did.  _ He might wonder if he’s just the latest in a string of your bad decisions. He might resent that you were willing to sleep with two other superior officers, men you knew for a shorter time than you’ve known him, men you didn’t even love, but you keep  _ him _ at a distance. _ ) 

“I can sleep on the sofa,” she says, doing everything she can to quiet those tiny, vicious little voices. “You had a couple of glasses of wine.”

“Thank you, but I’m fine to drive.” Roy rubs his forehead, and Riza notices again how exhausted he looks. “I’m going to stop in at the hospital and visit Havoc, actually. He’s getting transferred to a hospital in the East in another couple of weeks, now that his condition is more stable and his rehabilitation is progressing well. I’ll see him while I can.” 

Riza nods, looking down at the floor. Havoc mentioned that to her too, last time she visited. She’ll miss him. They both will. “Tell him I said hello.”

Riza walks him to the door, a melancholy silence falling over them, and she realizes that she is weary, too. Drained, after confessing her secrets. “Good night, Colonel. Please drive safely.”

“Good night, Lieutenant.”

Roy places his hand on the doorknob to leave, and then he hesitates. He releases the doorknob, and steps forward, wrapping his arms around her instead, pulling her close. It had been the last thing she expected, but it is welcome, so welcome. Riza buries her face in his shoulder, and Roy gently cups the back of her head in his hand, rubbing his thumb against her hair in a caress. 

Riza sobs, just once, at the release of tension. At the fact that she is still valued, still wanted, still loved. She hadn’t realized until this instant, just how vulnerable and terrified she had been - that she would tell him her secret, and he wouldn’t want her anymore. She bites her lip, holding back any further tears, and nestles against him. Roy shudders at the sound of her stifled cry, and holds her tighter, as if he would protect her.

“I’m sorry that you hurt,” he whispers. “I’m so sorry that I couldn’t help you.”

Riza remembers every dinner and late-night conversation they shared in his office. Every afternoon that the two of them walked to the Sweet Spring Lunchroom for lobster rolls, talking the entire way, even while they ate their lobster rolls on the way back. Every night out with the unit, drinking and playing pool at the Molten Rose. Every Saturday night dinner at Grumman’s manor, and their long talks afterward, leaning against the front door of her apartment. 

Ishval, and all those years alone with her father, left scars that will never entirely fade. But over time, over those years in East City, the extraordinary pain lessened. Roy had been with her every step of the way. 

“You did,” Riza responds quietly. 

They stay like that for a long time. Finally, Roy pulls back, just a little. He strokes her hair once and kisses her on the forehead, and Riza closes her eyes, savoring the tenderness of the gesture.

It is hard for both of them to let go, to step away from each other. Riza locks the door after Roy when he leaves, and she reflects, as she always does, that she misses him already. 

Black Hayate gives a small bark, peering over the armrest of the sofa at her. Riza goes to him and hugs him tight, as it begins to sink in. She had believed that she would carry this secret, this shame, to her grave. But she had finally spoken it out loud; confided it to one of the two people she loves and trusts the most. He hadn’t looked down on her, or judged her. Maybe someday, she will be able to tell Rebecca too. 

The relief of no longer carrying that burden is intoxicating. It is so profound that Riza nearly weeps from it. 

-

Rebecca calls her after work the next evening. “I’m planning to come to Central tomorrow to do some shopping,” she says breezily. “Please tell me that the Fuhrer doesn’t make you do work for him on Saturdays, like Mustang used to.”

Riza sets her spoon back down in her empty bowl, barely registering the  _ clink  _ of the metal against the porcelain. Pride’s sibilant whisper echoes in her mind.  _ If you speak of this to anyone, Colonel Mustang and your other friends will not go unharmed. Remember that, Lieutenant. No matter where you are, I’ll be watching you from the shadows. _

She doesn’t want Rebecca within a hundred kilometers of Central. 

“Don’t you have enough clothes already?” Riza tries to tease. 

Rebecca huffs in a way that can be easily translated to,  _ Riza, you idiot.  _ “I can never have enough clothes - and anyway, I heard The Express is having an incredible end-of-year sale. Besides, don’t you want to see me?”

“Of course I do.” Riza reaches for the newspaper on the other side of the table and pulls it closer, rifling through the pages until she finds the weather forecast. Bright, cold, and sunny. That mitigates some of her worries. As long as they stay in public places, in broad daylight, Pride should be unable to do anything to harm Rebecca. “What time are you getting in?”

“I’m thinking ten-hundred hours. We can shop for a few hours and then get lunch.” 

Riza hears the excitement in Rebecca’s voice, and she smiles. “That sounds good.”

“Oh, and will you bring Hayate, if he’s up for it?” Riza hears the clatter of cookware; Rebecca is probably making dinner. “I miss the little guy.” 

“He’s always up for an outing.” Black Hayate comes to sit at her feet, and then lifts a paw in a pleading reach for her empty bowl. Riza raises an eyebrow at him. “No, Black Hayate.”

“You could spoil him more, you know,” Rebecca tuts. 

“Why would I, when I have you to spoil him?” Riza shakes her head. “I remember when I was out of town on that mission with the Colonel, and I came back to find you and Havoc on a date, feeding Black Hayate ice cream--”

“That wasn’t a date!” Rebecca shrieks, and Riza has to hold the phone away from her ear. “Honestly, when I see you tomorrow, I’m not going to tell you  _ anything  _ about the blind date I  _ did  _ go on last Friday…”

Riza smiles again, as she takes her bowl to the kitchen to wash it. For the next few minutes, she has the luxury of forgetting about Pride, about Wrath, and about the logistics of planning a coup.

-

Riza and Black Hayate meet Rebecca at Central Station on Saturday morning at ten-hundred hours sharp. They buy a couple of earl gray lattes to go from Cafe Latte, and walk to Central’s shopping district, talking all the way. They haven’t been separated for such a long stretch of time since Riza’s deployment to Ishval eight years ago. Their regular phone conversations have been a welcome respite from the struggles of every work week, but they are no substitute for the joy of seeing the face and the unique mannerisms of a beloved friend. 

Rebecca lifts a thick, chunky sweater off the sales rack at The Express and holds it close. “What do you think? I like this dark red.”

“The color suits you.” Riza touches the heavy knit. “It’s warm. You could even wear it up north, as long as you have an adequate coat to go over it.”

“I don’t have to worry about going up north for a while, thankfully.” Rebecca slings the sweater over her arm. “The annual joint training exercise got postponed until spring. You heard about that border skirmish with Drachma a couple of weeks ago, right?”

“I did.” Riza releases the coat she had been admiring. She frowns, a thought suddenly occurring to her. The incident at the northern border was Drachma effectively shattering the Pact of Non-Aggression that has been in place for the past fourteen years. The Fuhrer had been upset, but… She’s surprised that the incident hadn’t sparked a stronger reaction in him. At the time, she had thought of it as further proof of his preoccupation, but now she wonders--

She is distracted by Rebecca’s entreaties for her to buy some clothes too. They finally return to their earlier conversation after they have finished shopping, making their way to The Nook for a late lunch, Black Hayate trotting happily just ahead of them. “We’re not having the joint training in the north, either,” Rebecca adds. “The Briggs soldiers are coming to us in the East in spring.” 

She holds Riza’s gaze and beams, her big, dark eyes sparkling with enthusiasm, as they claim a table out on the patio. “It’s going to be a really busy spring for us. I’ll have to take as much leave as I can before then. You should do the same.”

Riza blinks once as the pieces come together. The annual joint training exercise was postponed until spring. Briggs forces will be at East City Command in spring. This never happens; East City forces always travel up north for the joint training. Rebecca alluded that it would be a busy spring for both of them. 

Rebecca sees the understanding dawn in her eyes, and she smirks. They chat back and forth over their lunch, with Rebecca making no attempt at all to be discreet about sneaking Black Hayate table food. “Riza, have you gotten any days off?” Rebecca asks, as they take sips of their tea. 

“A couple here and there. I’ve just spent them doing some unpacking.” Riza rolls her eyes. “Please don’t look at me like that. I think I have more annual days off than when I was working under the Colonel, at least.”

“From the Colonel to the Fuhrer-President.” Rebecca props her chin in her hand and sighs. “Quite the promotion for you. It would have been a cause for celebration, under different circumstances.”

Not for the first time, Riza reflects that Rebecca and Roy have more in common than either of them would care to admit. Roy, too, has occasionally said the most tactless things out loud, in public.  _ When I become Fuhrer, I’m going to dismiss every single one of the generals that Bradley promoted,  _ he told her once, right there in the Sweet Spring Lunchroom. Riza had narrowly resisted the temptation to jump on him and stuff her apple in his mouth to shut him up. He took one look at her face and actually dared to smirk. 

Riza glances around, ensuring that no one is within hearing distance of Rebecca. They’re both in civilian clothes too, which helps. “Stop saying things that make me look bad, Catalina. This is a good learning experience.”

Rebecca picks up on her meaning (that it is good practice, for the role she will have when spring comes. It feels like an eternity away, and just around the corner, at once). She winks, lifting her teacup to her lips. 

“What about you?” Riza asks. “How are things going on Grumman’s staff? I can’t believe you’ve been with him for seven years.” 

Rebecca heaves an overwrought sigh, massaging her temples. “He’s always giving me a headache. He’s been so busy planning - the joint training exercise in spring - that he’s not keeping on top of any of his regular work. Maybe you can call and tell him to do his job for once. Or, better yet--” she adds, brightening. “You can introduce me to a good man from Central, like you promised!”

Riza scoops Black Hayate up from his spot under the table, and hands him to Rebecca. “Here,” she deadpans. “He’s the best man I know.”

Rebecca coos over the dog, cuddling him close. “Hayate! How can you put up with such a cold-hearted master? Perhaps you’d like to come live with your Auntie Rebecca, huh?” 

Black Hayate yips piteously, and Riza is distracted from her smart remark by the bells clanging out at the nearby clock tower. “Your train is arriving soon, isn’t it?” The day had absolutely flown by. She hasn’t smiled or laughed like this for the better part of this year. “We should get back to the station.” 

They make their way to the station, Rebecca encouraging her to take some leave soon and come visit her and Grumman. There is already a queue for the train back to East City when they arrive at Central Station, the passengers entering the train in pairs. Riza and Rebecca take a moment for an embrace anyway, and Rebecca’s arms are tight around her. Riza leans her cheek against Rebecca’s hair. “Take care of yourself.”

“You too, Riza.” Rebecca gives Black Hayate a farewell pet, and joins the queue. Riza sighs, subduing her disappointment, and picks her pup up, cradling him in her arms. 

Then Rebecca looks back over her shoulder to wave. “Say hi to Havoc for me, okay? I’ll see you soon!” 

“I will,” Riza calls back. Black Hayate curls his front paws around her arm and nudges her chin with his cold, wet nose, as if understanding that her spirits are a little low at the moment. He emits a soft, low  _ ruff,  _ trying to get her attention. Riza studies him, her interest piqued by the tiny slip of paper tucked into his collar. 

She retrieves the note and unfolds it. The words are printed in blue pen, in letters so miniscule they are nearly illegible. The print is still recognizable as Grumman’s.  _ April 29, 1915. The Promised Day.  _

Riza places the note into her purse, her pulse quickening. April 29. Just over four months from now. After seven years of work, day in and day out, dreaming and plotting and scheming, they are down to four months until all of their lives change. Until her Colonel becomes Fuhrer, and the momentous work of rebuilding Amestris can finally begin.

Riza shivers, and not from the cold. She steadies herself, and glances up at the position of the sun in the sky. She has enough daylight hours to get Black Hayate back home and then pass this note on to Havoc at the hospital. It is a Saturday, and her Colonel always visits Hughes and Havoc on Saturdays. Havoc will be able to pass the message on to Roy.

“Come on, Black Hayate,” she says, placing him back down on the ground. “Let’s go. It looks like I have some work to do.”

-

Riza returns from work on Tuesday evening and checks her mail. Amidst a letter from her magazine editor, a New Year’s greeting card from Black Hayate’s veterinarian, and several other letters from readers in response to her December article, she finds a note addressed to Elizabeth Dove. It is postmarked from Madame Christmas’s hostess bar. 

Riza opens the letter to Elizabeth first. She recognizes the handwriting as Roy’s left-handed script, designed to be clearly distinct from his typical right-handed handwriting. 

_ Elizabeth, _

_ I’m traveling for work until late April. I can’t wait to see you when I’m back in Central. We’ll have a lot to catch up on.  _

_ I’ll miss you. Take care. _

_ Yours,  _

_ Cassian _

Riza folds the letter in half, and then into quarters. She had expected as much; it is imperative that both of them avoid all suspicion in the coming months. They won’t be able to carry out their plan if the Fuhrer imprisons one or both of them leading up to the Promised Day. The time for being lax and self-indulgent is over. The mission comes first now, as it always should.

Her heart is still heavy. (Four months. This will mean four months of not seeing or speaking to Roy, except for in passing. It is even more painful considering the new territory they have tentatively ventured into of late, and Riza remembers the gentle press of his kiss against her forehead.) 

She wants to keep the letter. To tuck it away with her clothing, or with her mother’s journals, so that she can return to it later. So that she can reread the lines,  _ I can’t wait to see you. I’ll miss you.  _ To trace her fingertips over the dark ink, just once, and know that Roy’s hands brushed the same page. 

Riza stands up and goes to the kitchen. She tears the letter into a dozen little pieces and washes the shreds of paper down the sink.

-

The next sixteen weeks crawl by. Riza drifts through her days at work, performing her duties adequately, which is something she would normally never do. ( _ Adequacy is the lowest bar,  _ Bresler told all the cadets on their first day of marksmanship training. Riza has never forgotten that.) 

She returns home and spends hours with her notebook, writing out plans, objectives, and goals for her Colonel’s first thirty days in power. She expands that to the first ninety days, the first hundred days, and the first year, filling almost the entire book with her notes. It is nerve-wracking and exhilarating all at once, to put their dreams and ambitions onto paper, to commit every single one to reality and ascribe timelines to them. 

Riza sits up late every night working on this, Black Hayate stretched out at her feet. She knows that in his apartment, Roy must be doing the exact same thing. It comforts her, makes her smile softly to herself, despite their separation. 

-

At the end of January, under the guise of moving some of her possessions into storage, Riza carries three boxes of firearms and ammunition to the warehouse where Roy and Falman once interrogated Barry the Chopper. 

(This warehouse is rented out to Chris Mustang, using a decades-old and well established alias. Roy told her that Chris and her mentor, a woman by the name of Grace Randall, used to store their contraband liquor here. The warehouse is conveniently connected to Chris’s bar via an underground passageway that is a relic from the Prohibition era.  _ That passageway could come in useful someday,  _ Roy said, the first time the two of them visited this warehouse, years ago, and Riza had nodded her agreement.) 

-

March arrives, and Riza sends coded letters to Breda and Fuery, figuring out the logistics of their desertions from Western Command and Southern Command respectively. Riza sends letters (letters, because phone lines can’t be trusted for this) to General Hall and Lieutenant Colonel Reid as well, and ensures that neither Breda or Fuery will have forces sent to pursue them once they desert their posts. 

Both Hall and Reid send similar letters back, addressed to Elizabeth Dove at Madame Christmas’s bar, the name and address she indicated they should use for any return correspondence.  _ I don’t know what you’re planning, but please be careful.  _ (Reid added a line -  _ please don’t do anything stupid. _ ) 

-

In the first week of April, Riza writes her last will and testament. Just in case.

She instructs that her firearm collection should be split equally between Havoc, Breda, and Rebecca. Her clothing should be donated. Her books should go to Falman. Her mother’s journals and photo albums will return to Grumman. In the event of her demise, Black Hayate will be entrusted to Roy, or to Fuery. (Riza cries a little when she writes this.) The contents of her bank account will be divided between the Elric brothers. 

Riza writes a couple of letters, as well. In her letter to Rebecca, she thanks her for being the sister she never had; for being the first person to love her since her mother passed.  _ Your friendship and kindness changed my life. I don’t think I would have survived those first six months after Ishval without you.  _

She tells Rebecca that she is brilliant, far more intelligent than she gives herself credit for, and that she could rise through the ranks, if she wanted.  _ The military - the new military - will need leaders like you.  _

_ But only if that is something you want. Life is too short to commit yourself to something that you have no true passion for. I want you to be happy, always.  _

Riza sets a page aside for Grumman. She tells him that she knows it must have been difficult to tell her the truth, that first year she had been stationed in East City. She tells him that she is grateful that time, and the Colonel, eased her reservations toward meeting him.

_ I will never be able to thank you enough for your stories of Mother,  _ Riza writes,  _ and for her journals. I got to know her in a way that I never would have otherwise. Thank you for telling me about Grandmother Eleanor, and about your own life. When Father passed, I thought that I was truly alone in this world, with no remaining familial connections. It has been a comfort to know that was not the case. _

Riza pauses, tapping the point of her pen against the paper, lost in thought. Remembering her grandmother’s pearl necklace and earrings, gifted to her by Grumman, and the antique Colt Commander he gave her on her twenty-fifth birthday.  _ My father gave this to me on my twenty-fifth birthday, as well. It’s been in the family for generations.  _

(It turns out that she comes from a long line of soldiers. She had no idea, until meeting Grumman.)

_ I know that your values and the Colonel’s do not always align,  _ Riza adds, on the next line.  _ Please know that it is my greatest wish that you support his endeavors in all things, now and always. I shared his dreams, and I was willing to give my life to see them become reality.  _

_ In addition, please do not place any blame on the Colonel for what has happened to me. I know that will be your instinct, and I implore you to refrain. Things will be difficult enough for him without facing censure from you.  _

_ On our last dinner with you in East City, you asked the Colonel to look out for me. He did, as he always has. He has always made me happy.  _

_ I love you, Grandfather. _

Riza has to take a break then. She makes a cup of tea and sips it in the kitchen, trying to regain her sense of equilibrium. 

She doesn’t want to write the last letter. She recoils from the idea, body and soul. 

But it has to be done. Riza settles herself back at the table with a fresh sheet of paper, a pen, and an envelope. She stares at the empty page for some time, disorganized fragments of thoughts swirling around her mind, unusually chaotic.

_ Colonel Mustang, _

_ Please forgive me if this letter is disjointed. This was not easy to write. _

Riza puts the pen down. She takes a deep breath, placing her head in her hands. She can’t do this. If these are the last words she will ever communicate to Roy, she has a thousand things she wants to say. She’s always been a concise writer (Roy and the unit teased her for her “brusque” memos), but for this, she could fill pages upon pages.

But there is no time for that. For her, as well as for him. Her Colonel might have to read this letter and get on with the work ahead of him.

_ The notebook at the bottom of the box marked “Household Items” contains detailed plans for your first year in power. I hope that you find this helpful. _

_ It is my wish that Second Lieutenant Breda serve as my replacement, as your bodyguard and right-hand man. His intelligence, skill, and temperament make him the best suited for the position. I trust him as deeply with this task as I trusted myself.  _

_ Most importantly - Colonel, please do not blame yourself for what has happened to me. I entered into this knowing what the risks were, and I have always been willing to give my life for our objective. Please do not give in to despair. Continue to live and move forward, and make every single one of our goals a reality. I know that you can, and will, do this. For my sake, and for the Ishvalans, if not your own.  _

Riza writes the next line before she can think better of it.

_ I love you.  _

_ Riza Hawkeye, First Lieutenant _

She folds the letter into thirds, places it in the envelope, and addresses it. Then she puts it in the box alongside the other two letters and her will.

-

In the third week of April, Riza writes down detailed copies of Fuhrer Bradley’s travel schedule for the next week. 

-

Riza leaves Central Command at seventeen-thirty hours on April 27, 1915, with the full knowledge that when she returns here two days from now, Central Command - and Central City - will be a battleground. 

She walks home, mimicking her normal demeanor; alert, watchful, vigilant, without being excessively reactive or visibly paranoid. She returns to her apartment, changes into civilian clothes, and arms herself with her two guns, as usual. She prepares Black Hayate for a walk, as she does every evening. 

She has been gradually expanding Black Hayate’s walk route for the past four months to encompass the part of the city where the warehouse is located. There is a cafe a couple of blocks away where they regularly stop for dinner on the way back from these walks. Their presence in the area this evening will not be suspicious.

This part takes some work. Riza rigs the light switch in her apartment, using the trick Breda once taught her, so that it will flick on in about an hour and a half. Ideally, this will create the illusion to any external observers that she and Black Hayate have returned home. This isn’t perfect; it relies on any spies for the Fuhrer seeing the light flick on and simply assuming that they missed seeing her walk into her apartment, but she has no other choice. 

Before leaving her apartment, Riza calls and leaves a message on Captain Storch’s office phone. She asks him to please inform the Fuhrer that she is feeling unwell and will be unable to report for duty tomorrow morning, to accompany the Fuhrer to East City.

(She has been calling out sick toward the end of the month every month since December. Her hope is that Storch and the Fuhrer will see the pattern, assume that she is indisposed due to her menstrual cycle, and think nothing of the fact that she happens to be out of work just before the Promised Day.) 

Riza and Black Hayate set off on their walk route. Riza observes her dog, attentive to the movements of his ears and tail, the cadence and pace of his steps, and his posture. If Pride approaches them, she is confident that Black Hayate will be the first to know. If that happens, they will reassess. She has planned for all eventualities. 

The two of them are unbothered by person and homunculus alike, as they approach the warehouse district. They have their dinner at the cafe where they are now regulars, and the owner greets them with a smile.

Riza and Black Hayate leave the café. For the benefit of anyone observing them from the rooftops of the surrounding buildings, Riza pretends to grow fascinated with a nearby shop. They enter the shop, leave through the back door, and proceed straight to the warehouse, entering through the warehouse’s back door.

The first thing Riza does is turn on all the lights. (Every single one. She doesn’t want to see a single shadow tonight.) She and Black Hayate perform a careful security sweep of the vast storage space and the attached bathroom, ensuring that they are completely alone, and that no suspicious items have been planted on the premises. 

Riza’s shoulders shake once, just once, when it hits her that she is alone here, on the verge of open rebellion against the government. If she has miscalculated anything at all, Pride or the Fuhrer’s associates could destroy her.

She begins preparing her collection of firearms, for how it soothes her and gives her a much-needed sense of control. At twenty-hundred hours, a familiar coded knock sounds on the warehouse’s back door. Riza turns sharply to Black Hayate. The dog rushes to the door, but his body language reveals nothing but excitement - tail wagging, mouth relaxed, ears slightly back. “I’m grateful for your nose, Black Hayate,” Riza whispers, before opening the door a crack. 

The man who quickly steps into the warehouse has black hair, a full beard and mustache, spectacles, and green eyes. If not for Black Hayate’s reaction, she wouldn’t have recognized him. The second Riza shuts and locks the door behind him, Breda doubles over with a groan, tossing his spectacles on the floor. “I need to get these things out of my eyes. They’re killing me. Hey, Riza.” 

Riza smiles. “You’ve outdone yourself this time. I wouldn’t have recognized you if Black Hayate hadn’t been with me.” She looks away, cringing, as Breda reaches into both of his eyes, plucking the colored lenses free. “I don’t know how you do that.”

“Aren’t you the one who tended to Lan Fan after her amputation? This is nothing compared to what you saw there.” Breda withdraws a small carrying case from the pocket of his coat and carefully deposits the lenses into the case. He pulls off his wig, and the fake beard and mustache, and becomes fully the Breda she knows.

It is such a relief to see him, and Riza moves forward, hugging him. “I’m glad that you made it.”

Breda stiffens with surprise, before reciprocating the embrace. As deeply as she cares for her unit, she has always been reserved with physical touch out of necessity, limiting herself to the occasional pat on their shoulders. “I told you that even a pack of wild dogs couldn’t keep me away.”

Black Hayate gives a small bark, affronted. Breda laughs, but keeps a safe distance regardless, content to raise a hand in greeting to the dog. “No offense, Second Lieutenant.” He turns to her. “It’s good to see you. Are we expecting Fuery tonight?”

Riza checks her watch. “Yes. We’ll be able to prepare all of our sets of equipment and sleep here tonight, and I’ll give you both a complete briefing of the plan tomorrow. There’s a lot to go over, but we’ll have plenty of time for discussion and questions before we meet up with the Colonel at seventeen-thirty hours.” 

Breda salutes her. “Sounds good. I’ll help you reload those guns.”

“Thanks.” Riza smirks, remembering how he and the rest of the unit used to tease her. “My little collection did come in handy, after all.”

“I promise that we’ll never say a word about your personal armory ever again.” Breda shakes his head, beginning to reload a Model 51 Imperial, one of her favorites. “It’s unreal, knowing that half of us will be back together tonight. I bet it’s killing the Colonel to stay put until tomorrow evening and not head over here early.”

Riza checks an Arisaka rifle she hasn’t taken to the range in months. “I wish I could tell him that you and Fuery made it here safe.”

Breda glances at his own watch. “Well...the kid’s not here yet. Sorry,” he adds hastily, catching sight of her reaction to the words. “I bet he’ll be here before midnight. If not, I’ll head out and look for him.”

“I’ll feel better when he’s here. It’s strange enough not to have Falman and Havoc with us,” Riza admits.

“Falman will be here with the rest of the Briggs forces on the Promised Day. And Jean’s helping out, from a distance,” Breda assures her. He bends, retrieving a Blaser R8 from one of the boxes. “Thanks for looking out for him like you did, by the way. I was worried about leaving him, considering how he was back then. I’d call every few days, and I could tell that his spirits were always up after you and the Colonel visited.”

Riza nods. “Of course. I was glad that he didn’t get transferred back to a hospital in the East immediately.”

“I think he was a little worried about being left behind. Because we all continued to serve, and he didn’t. It meant a lot to him, that you and the Colonel didn’t…” Breda shrugs. “Forget about him, I guess. Since he saw himself as no longer useful to the Colonel’s mission.”

Riza keeps her eyes on her weapon. Havoc’s fear of being cast aside and replaced, forgotten, because of his lack of ability, strikes a chord in her. “Never,” she says shortly. “That would never happen.” 

Breda grins. “Yeah. That’s what I told him.” 

Black Hayate barks at the back door, startling both of them. He hurtles toward the back door, even more exuberant than he had been when he sensed Breda’s arrival, and Riza expects the coded knock that comes a moment afterward. She opens the door, with Breda standing guard nearby. They both blink in identical displays of surprise as Fuery ducks in. 

The first thing the young Master Sergeant does is pick Black Hayate up and hug him close. “Black Hayate! I missed you!”

“It’s you, all right,” Riza observes, amused, as Black Hayate licks Fuery on the cheek. 

“What are we, chopped liver?” Breda grouses. 

Fuery sets Black Hayate down and beams at both of them, before offering sharp salutes. “Lieutenant Hawkeye, Second Lieutenant Breda, it’s great to see both of you again! How did I do, Second Lieutenant?”

Breda peers at Fuery, impressed by his disguise. “That scar on your face is really something. Nice wig, too.”

Riza inspects the long, jagged scar on Fuery’s face, underneath one of the bandages plastered to both of his cheeks. “Please tell me that isn’t real.”

“The big scar is painted on.” Fuery pulls off the blonde wig, tousling his sweat-soaked natural hair, and gives her a rueful smile. “The scrapes under the bandages are real, but they’re not too bad.”

Out of all of her unit, Fuery was the one she had worried for the most, with his posting to the front lines of the conflict between Amestris and Aerugo. Breda claps Fuery on the shoulder. “Nice job, Master Sergeant. It’s a hell of an accomplishment to walk away from seven months at the front with nothing worse than minor injuries to show for it.”

Riza hugs Fuery, and he hugs her tightly, before pulling back and looking at both of them. “I knew I couldn’t die or get seriously hurt out there, because I still had work to do here.” 

The three of them fall into conversation immediately, relieved to be able to talk freely for the first time in more than half a year. They periodically patrol the perimeter of the warehouse with Black Hayate, and the dog remains alert but relaxed, displaying no sign that he has sensed any intruders, human or otherwise. 

Their unit is on the verge of something momentous, the most dangerous and extreme plan of their lives, but strangely, Riza’s earlier anxiety recedes. She refuses to fall into the trap of becoming overconfident or reckless, but having her best friends and closest allies finally by her side again is an almost tangible reassurance. As strong as they are on their own, as strong as  _ she  _ is on her own, they are always stronger together.

“We need to get some rest,” Riza announces at twenty-two hundred hours, interrupting Breda and Fuery’s discussion of how well-matched the Briggs and East City forces will be against Central Command’s soldiers. “We can talk more tomorrow.”

“Come on, Hawkeye,” Breda protests.

“It’s only twenty-two hundred hours, Lieutenant.” Fuery, leaning against a storage crate and wrapped in his hooded cloak, looks a little like a child enfolded in a blanket. His words lose some impact, as he speaks them around a yawn. 

“We won’t be able to sleep tomorrow night,” Riza counters, unmoved. “We’ll be living on caffeine pills between tomorrow afternoon and whenever the battle in Central comes to an end. You’ll thank me for this later. I’ll take the first guard watch while the two of you sleep.”

Breda and Fuery grumble a little while they set out their bedrolls, but they don’t argue. “Wake me when you get tired and I’ll take the next shift,” Breda tells her. 

Riza agrees. They don’t risk turning the lights out in the warehouse; Breda and Fuery pull their traveling coats over their heads instead, as they settle in for sleep. 

Riza watches over her team, as she always has, as she always will. Twenty-four hours from now, their plan will be in motion. They would have already moved to capture the First Lady. Forty-eight hours from now, the battle in Central will be over, Pride and Wrath will be destroyed, and her Colonel will have taken power. 

She curls her knees to her chest and wraps one arm around them, the other gripping her handgun, and she waits.

-

The three of them sleep in the next morning, and Riza spends the next several hours leading a detailed, hour-by-hour briefing about their plan of action. “This was the plan as of the last time the Colonel and I were able to discuss it,” she clarifies. “He may have made some changes since we last spoke. If so, he’ll update us when we see him this evening.”

They take their caffeine pills in the late afternoon, toasting the Colonel, each other, Falman, Havoc, the Elric brothers, and Black Hayate. The pill tastes bitter on the way down.

Riza, Breda, and Fuery take an hour for themselves to wait for the caffeine to kick in, and savor their last chance to be alone with their thoughts for the immediate future. Riza sits with Black Hayate, stroking the soft fur on his head. She expects the uncomfortable restlessness and uncharacteristic anxiety that surges through her every time she drinks coffee, but to her mild surprise, there is none of that. There is just focus and readiness to a degree beyond anything she has experienced before, in any field operation or even on the front lines. 

Riza joins Breda and Fuery, waiting near the entrance to the hidden passageway. She takes one look at her teammates and sees her own levelheaded resolve in them. She shrugs on her rifle, reflexively checking for her spare handguns. “Let’s do this.”

Breda and Fuery went down here earlier to light the torches alongside the passageway. The torches are placed at uneven intervals, though, and the light flickers, irregular and erratic, casting long, grasping shadows. The sight of them sends her heart leaping into her throat, and Riza resists the fear that threatens to creep around her. The other corridors that feed into this main passageway remain dark and unlit, and the dark spaces emanate a sense of quiet menace that she hasn’t felt since she was a little girl afraid of the dark.

Thankfully, their journey passes without incident, and the three of them finally arrive at the meeting point. Seventeen-thirty comes and goes, though, while Riza hides her apprehension. Fuery crouches to pet Black Hayate, clearly trying to distract himself. “He’s fifteen minutes late. “You don’t think anything happened?”

“The Colonel is always late,” Riza assures him. “He’s been on time exactly twice in all the years I’ve known him.” 

The splintering wooden door in front of them creaks open then, and the Colonel emerges, looking as smoothly put together as always. He smiles when he sees them waiting, and the sight is as welcome as a ray of sunshine and a fresh spring breeze after twenty-four hours spent in a musty warehouse. 

“About time, Colonel,” Breda greets, and Riza thinks back to how relentlessly he and Havoc would mock Roy for his perpetual tardiness.  _ One of your prize possessions you always carry with you is a pocketwatch, and yet you’re always late?  _ “We didn’t think you were going to show up.”

“Keep up with those smartass comments,” Roy returns, just as he always used to. There’s a levity in his tone, a relaxation to the set of his shoulders, that Riza hasn’t seen since the unit was separated. “I’ll take it as a sign of confidence.” He looks at them in turn, his gaze finally lighting on her. “You made sure you weren’t followed?” 

“Yes. And if we had been, this little guy would have let us know.” Riza smiles down at Black Hayate, who beams up at Roy. He barks a cheerful greeting at his commanding officer and old friend, wagging his tail. 

Roy grins back. It lights up his face, alleviating the subtle lines of strain and tension there. He crouches, stroking the dog on the head, and Black Hayate nuzzles against his palm in delight. “Good boy,” he praises, and Riza realizes how much she had missed the sound of his voice. “Keep your nose peeled for us, okay?”

Roy straightens, back to business, and looks at her. “What’s the status of the First Family?”

“I have the entire family’s itineraries for the next three days. The Fuhrer went to the joint training in the East, and Selim joined him for the trip as well.”

“Then you haven’t heard the news.” Roy’s eyes narrow. “The Fuhrer’s train was destroyed, with the Fuhrer riding in it.” 

Riza can’t hold back a quick, shocked intake of breath. Beside her, Fuery and Breda look just as taken aback. This hadn’t been part of the plan at all.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Breda mutters, recovering first. “Grumman doesn’t like to take any chances, does he?”

Riza taps a finger against her lower lip in thought, her mind racing. Why had Grumman gone rogue, and made such a major move without informing Roy? Had it been an attempt to help her Colonel, and clear the path for him? Or did he not have faith in Roy’s abilities to defeat Bradley on his own? Either way, it had been one of Grumman’s rare missteps. “Security is going to be elevated now,” she says. “This is going to be even more difficult than we thought it would be.”

“How much is this going to affect our mission?” Fuery asks. “Is the Eastern battalion still going to invade Central as planned?” 

Roy grimaces, his displeasure evident. “I don’t know. All we know is that the Fuhrer is missing. This is either a once in a lifetime chance for us to act, or we’re walking into a trap.”

“It doesn’t really make a difference,” Breda replies, reading her mind. “We’ve got to see this through.” 

She and Fuery nod their agreement. Roy just stares at them, lost in thought, looking a thousand kilometers away. She knows that he must be analyzing the situation as it stands from every possible angle, assessing and reassessing the path ahead of them to ensure its continued viability. 

“Your orders, sir?” Riza prompts. 

Her Colonel’s attention re-focuses at once. “Whatever action we may take, we’re heading straight for the battlefield. And no matter the outcome, there’s no turning back. Even if we win the battle ahead, we can’t grow complacent,” Roy says forcefully. “This mission still won’t be close to completion - not until we completely rebuild this nation. We still have the task of setting things right, and I need every one of your support in that goal. With that in mind, I’m only giving you a single order to obey. You are all under orders not to die. Is that understood?” 

The three of them salute him in unison. “Yes, sir.” 

“Good.” Roy glares around at them, making it clear how serious he is. “Breda, Fuery, I assume that the Lieutenant gave you our mission briefing?"

“Yes, sir,” they chorus. 

“Excellent. We have two hours until we move out to seize the First Lady. We’ll take my car. I’m going to need both of your opinions on a couple of matters, but I need to speak with the Lieutenant alone first.” 

They split up, Breda and Fuery heading back in the direction of the warehouse, while Roy and Riza remain in the corridor. “Go with them, Black Hayate,” Riza instructs, disliking the thought of the two of them proceeding through the shadowy passageway alone. Between her sensitivity to Pride’s presence and Roy’s Flame Alchemy, the two of them should be safe here.

Black Hayate trots off after them. They watch in preoccupied silence as the three turn around the corner. Riza turns to Roy. “I had no idea about Grumman’s plan.”

“I know you didn’t.” Roy rubs his temples. “His help has been valuable over these past months, but his taking this action doesn’t sit right with me. I’m going to have words with him when all of this is over.” 

“I support you in whatever you choose to do, Colonel,” Riza replies, steadfast. “Regardless of my personal relationship with the Lieutenant General.” 

“Thank you. I know that I can always count on you.” Roy studies her, and Riza is abruptly aware that this is the first time they have been alone since that night in her apartment, when he held her in his arms and pressed a kiss to her forehead.  _ I can’t wait to see you again,  _ he had written, in his letter to Elizabeth.  _ I’ll miss you. Take care.  _

All of that seems like an eternity ago. The embrace, the kiss, the night she had kissed him on the cheek as thanks for healing her, and he stayed with her until she fell asleep. Those had been moments shared between Roy and Riza, but right now, there is no room for that. There is only room for the Colonel and the Lieutenant. 

“I need to tell you something, before we walk into this,” Roy says suddenly. Riza sees a muscle in his jaw tighten, just as his shoulders do. “I should have spoken to you about this a long time ago. If anything happens to me tomorrow--”

“Colonel,” Riza interrupts. She can’t stand to hear this. She had confronted the possibility of her own death more or less unflinchingly, but the idea that Roy might not survive the conflict ahead is completely incomprehensible. Anathema. She rejects it with every fiber of her being. “Don’t.” 

Roy speaks over her, ignoring her protest. “If anything happens to me tomorrow, I know that either Armstrong and Grumman - perhaps both - are going to try to establish themselves as the new Fuhrer. I need you to know that I do not support this. If I die, my order is that you serve in my place as the Fuhrer-President of Amestris.”

Riza blinks. She hadn’t expected that. “I--” she stammers. “Me?”

Roy nods, as if he had given her a completely reasonable command. “I plan on giving this order to Breda and Fuery when we leave here. They’ll pass it on to Falman. I know that they will support you, as they have always supported me.” 

“Colonel.” Riza struggles to form a response. She has always been the loyal subordinate, the Lieutenant, the assistant, the right-hand man. The support. She can’t even imagine being the one in power. “Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.” Roy gives her a gentle smile, taking her by surprise. “There’s no one more qualified than you. You said it yourself - that what we did in Ishval makes us so dedicated to reforming this country. We have a personal commitment to this cause that others who weren’t in Ishval don’t understand, as capable and competent otherwise they may be.”

“You remembered.” Her fingers have gone numb with shock. Riza flexes them, trying to regain feeling.

“Of course I remembered.” Roy says it as if it should be the most obvious thing in the world. “Do you agree to your orders, Lieutenant?”

“Do I have a choice?” Riza asks, only half-joking.

“No. You don’t.”

“Then it’s settled.” Riza dares resting a hand on his arm for just a moment, in an unusual display of emotion. “Please don’t die, sir.”

She tries to speak the words in her typical matter-of-fact tone, and she is partially successful. Roy’s eyes follow her hand when she withdraws. “I’m not planning on it.” He clears his throat. “What I have been planning for is your status, and everyone else’s, when this is over. I intend to promote you to Colonel.”

This shocks her nearly as much as his earlier suggestion. Riza almost gasps out loud. “A three-rank promotion?” she demands. “You can’t be serious.”

“Do I look like I’m joking? You helped me plan all of this, Hawkeye,” Roy stresses. “An entire coup. We did this together. That alone should justify your new position. With all the work that you’ll be doing for me within the first year or two alone, you could rise to Brigadier General.”

Riza’s head spins. As dedicated as she has always been to the advancement of Roy’s career, she has never really planned for the advancement of her own. “Colonel, it’s too much. I’m content to serve as your First Lieutenant for the rest of my tenure in the military. The trust you put in me is what is important, not my rank.”

“This is a good thing for you,” Roy argues. He gestures, frustrated. “Look at what has been going on for the past seven months, Lieutenant. That should illustrate my point. The Fuhrer could give you any orders he pleased, demand anything he wanted of you, and there was nothing you could do about it, due to your rank. I want you to have more power. As a Colonel, as a General, you won’t be as vulnerable as you are now. You would be on more of an equal footing to the people around you.”

Riza takes a moment to measure her response. The understanding of what her Colonel isn’t saying outright begins to settle over her. “I see,” she says slowly. 

In response, Roy reaches out, and tentatively brushes a stray lock of hair behind her ear. It is the lightest touch, but it lingers, and it speaks a thousand words. It leaves her chest tight, her heart full, and Riza places her hand on his chest, wanting to communicate the same sentiment in return. 

It isn’t the touch that breaks her. It is the way Roy looks at her, with hope mingling with desire and hunger. 

Riza steps forward and looks up at him, silently giving him permission.

He kisses her with searing intensity, so hard she stumbles back against the wall. Riza wraps her arms around him, pulling him in close, tight against her. The proximity, one hand tilting her face up to his, the other arm holding her, his mouth warm on hers, is bliss and comfort like she has never felt before. She has longed for this, ached for this, for so many years, and it is perfect and right in a way that she has never experienced. Riza moans into the kiss, running her hands over his back. Roy kisses her with even more fervor then, leaving her breathless, as his teeth scrape her bottom lip. She leans into him, fisting her hands into the lapels of his coat--

Black Hayate whines. 

Riza freezes. Roy pulls back just enough for her to see Fuery and Black Hayate standing as if shell-shocked, just around the corner. Fuery, contrary to the orders Roy gave them a short while ago, looks ready to die. Even Black Hayate appears petrified.

Roy regains his composure with admirable speed, taking a half-step away. He keeps a protective hand on her shoulder. “What is it, Master Sergeant?” His voice sounds entirely normal, as if Fuery had walked in on them having a professional discussion about the upcoming mission. 

“Sorry,” Fuery manages, stammering, taking one step back, and then another. “Lieutenant, I just wanted to ask what you wanted to do with Black Hayate during the mission. I didn’t know if he was coming into combat with us, or if he was going to stay here at the warehouse, or if you wanted me to drop him off at your apartment, since I still have my disguise. I didn’t mean to interrupt. I’ll just….go away now.”

Fuery turns, fully prepared to sprint off down the hallway. Riza sighs. The entire unit - except Falman, who knows better - has operated under an erroneous assumption about her and the Colonel for years. Every one of them has made it clear that they don’t think less of her or Roy for their (perceived) secret relationship, but still. Fuery certainly didn’t need to see her and the Colonel in such a compromising position. “Wait, Master Sergeant. Thank you for thinking about Black Hayate. I’ve trained him to find his way home, and I hid some food in the alleys around my apartment for him to eat until I’m able to return. He’ll head home tonight, once we leave here.”

“Yes, Lieutenant,” Fuery squeaks. He salutes them. “I’ll see both of you later.”

“We’ll head back with you now,” Roy replies easily, and one glance at him confirms that he’s actually a little amused. Riza narrows her eyes at him. 

Fuery hurries ahead with Black Hayate, and the two of them follow. “That was ill-advised,” Riza murmurs, reaching up to make sure her updo is still in place. “This isn’t the time for such things.”

“You’re right, Lieutenant,” Roy agrees. The back of his hand brushes hers, as they walk. “We’ll focus on the mission now. We can take care of the rest later.” 

Riza nods, keeping her eyes straight ahead. She takes that promise for  _ later  _ and holds it close. “Yes, sir.”

* * *

_ to be continued _

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :) (the menacing smiley face of knowing what happens to Roy and Riza soon, while they have no idea.)
> 
> As always, thank you so much to everybody who left comments and kudos on the previous chapter - reading them makes me so happy. Thank you, especially, to my friends on tumblr who have been so kind and supportive of this story. It means a lot to me. 
> 
> I have a few notes for this chapter and a lot of thoughts around Riza's conversation with Roy about her past.
> 
> I want to make it clear that personally, I do not believe that Riza had to disclose the information about her past and her history to Roy. Personally, I do not believe that Riza should carry shame for her number of partners, who they were, or the circumstances in which all of those unfolded. Riza's decision to confide that in Roy, and her feelings of pain and shame and guilt around her past, were decisions made by Riza the character in this story, not something that I personally think she should have felt obligated to do or feel. 
> 
> In an earlier chapter, Riza reflected that she would take those secrets of her past to her grave. I fully intended to have her never tell those secrets to Roy. 
> 
> But I relatively recently realized I needed to write the scene. I have been in the same position as Riza - not with the same secrets, but in the same position, where I confided secrets and shame that I carried with me for years, things that caused me so much pain, to my partner. It was so frightening, to be that vulnerable, to know that the person you care for so deeply and see a future with, could reject you because of what you are disclosing. It was an act of bravery and trust.
> 
> And when they accept you, when they hold you in their arms afterwards still love and cherish you, when it doesn't change how they look at you... in my eyes, that's how you know that it's real love, and the love goes deep. I wanted to depict Roy and Riza sharing that vulnerability and emotional intimacy. 
> 
> A big theme of this story has been choice, and Riza's choices. Riza chose to enlist in the military and to train as a sniper. She chose to stay in the military after Ishval, and commit her life to rebuilding Ishval and reforming Amestris. She has chosen to pursue a path that will ultimately ends with her and Roy being executed for war crimes. Riza asserts that she made the choices she did in her past, with Reid and Bresler and the others, as well. In this chapter, Riza finally makes the choice that she is willing to be with Roy in a romantic sense, even with the inherent risks and dangers of him being the Fuhrer-President of Amestris (as she thinks he is going to be).
> 
> I thought it was interesting to consider how Riza finally breaks her "rule" of no more getting involved with her commanding officers for Roy, because it is something she truly wants and someone she truly loves, rather than something she is seeking as a coping mechanism. 
> 
> Random other notes--
> 
> Riza asked Roy to not do anything to make her regret confiding in him. I can still easily imagine him sitting at his office desk and writing hate mail letters to Lieutenant Colonel Reid. (Who he's met...like, they've been in meetings together before...awkward...)
> 
> Writing Riza broke my heart during the above conversation, but also Roy's reaction. He has tried so hard to practice self-control and scrupulous behavior with Riza because of her position as his subordinate, and for him to know that others didn't, when Riza was much younger, too, was a blow. 
> 
> Riza's separation from Roy, her letter to him, and the details of the will she wrote, also low key broke my heart. 
> 
> I also absolutely did not plan that Roy and Riza were going to share their first kiss before the Promised Day, but that idea came into my mind and I couldn't resist. It felt SO GOOD to write that, after thirteen chapters and over 150k words of slow burn. 
> 
> I loved writing about Riza's reunion with Breda and Fuery, and that she got to see Rebecca again :) 
> 
> This concludes my essay that absolutely no one asked for! This was one of the two highest-stakes chapters in the fic imo (along with the chapter where Riza was in Ishval) and I would love, love, love to hear what you thought about it. Any comments would be treasured.
> 
> Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it! I am also on tumblr @lantur if you would like to connect.


	15. interlude

Roy leaves his Lieutenant’s apartment building. Night fell over the course of their evening together, and the cold is so bracing it is like a slap to the face. 

Still, he leans against the side of the stone staircase leading up to the front doors, and he buries his face in his hands. He stays like that until his fingers go numb. 

Roy finally runs a hand through his hair, in a futile attempt to warm it. He jams his hands into the pockets of his coat and begins to walk. 

He told Riza he was going to visit Havoc at the hospital. He meant it at the time, but he bypasses his car, parked discreetly in the alley behind Riza’s building. Roy keeps walking, retracing the path he took with Black Hayate several weeks ago. His steps lead him to the park, abandoned and silent at this hour. 

The park’s main walking pathway is punctuated sporadically by streetlamps. His Lieutenant would still hate the thought of him wandering here alone, under their current circumstances. 

Roy pulls his gloves on, arming himself. The gloves normally send a sense of power and surety, an unshakable confidence, coursing through his veins. Tonight, they are just a reminder of his own helplessness. 

He walks. It does nothing to clear his mind. There is a bitter taste in his mouth, reminiscent of the time he bit into a plum that had been perfect on the outside and rotting on the inside.

He can’t shake the memory of Riza’s confession. The First Lieutenant on her sniper team. Her marksmanship instructor. Rage floods over him, and Roy shudders, his hands curling into fists. 

He knew Riza at seventeen. At eighteen. In Ishval. Roy remembers her as she had been then. Those haunted eyes, dark circles underneath them. The sorrowful downturn of her lips. The unhealthy pallor of her skin. The way she always drew her hooded cloak around her, as though she could never get warm. The year of rigorous military training she had undergone since he saw her last left Riza stronger, leaner, maybe even a little taller, than the sixteen-year-old he remembered. But her face retained its youthfulness, the last vestiges of roundness still clinging to her cheeks. 

Someone looked at Riza as she was then - a vulnerable, traumatized seventeen- and then eighteen-year-old girl, reeling from the atrocities she was forced to commit daily - and decided, _I want to fuck her._ They decided that the decent thing, the appropriate thing, that they would do with the cadet on their sniper team, with their student, was to take her to bed. Not once. Not in one shameful, abhorrent mistake, never to be repeated. Over and over again. 

It makes him sick. It makes him want to weep. 

He knew Riza, when she had been that young. She had been so trusting. (Roy remembers her sliding the blazer off her back, revealing the Flame Alchemy tattoo to him, letting him study it off her skin for hours at a time. Even that afternoon, he had tried to warn her, as delicately as he could, to be careful about exposing her back to others.  _ Every alchemist in Amestris - in the world, even - would do anything to attain the knowledge you hold the key to.  _ Riza showed her back to him, and he appreciated the trust she put in him, but he wanted very badly to tell her not to be so trusting in the future.) 

Riza was shy but sweet, in her quiet way, and so responsive to even the smallest kindnesses and courtesies. (Because Master Hawkeye showed her none, during all the years of her growing up.) When he was eighteen, twenty, twenty-one, Roy thought that Riza as a teenager was cute, in the same way ducklings or kittens were cute. 

The thought that some men - men older than he had been at the time - could look at a girl like that and want something sexual from her, and take advantage of her nature in order to get what they wanted, is--

Roy exhales, short and sharp, and looks up at the sky. He presses a hand to his face. Low outside temperature aside, his skin is flushed and hot.

Riza made him promise not to do anything that would make her regret what she disclosed. His heart pounds in his chest. 

He knows Lieutenant Colonel Reid is stationed at South City Command, out of easy reach. (For now.) But Riza’s marksmanship instructor at the Military Academy… 

Roy strides back to his car. 

He drives (too fast) to the Central Public Library, open twenty-four hours a day. He runs a red light on the way, lost in thought, but luckily, the intersection is empty. Roy illegally double-parks his car outside of the library and takes the steps up two at a time.

He requests the most recent staff directory for the State Military Academy. The librarian glances at his fingers, tapping out an erratic rhythm on the help desk. She retrieves the staff directory for him and then moves away, giving him a wide berth. She doesn’t ask any further questions. 

Roy flips through the pages of the directory.  _ Jake Bresler.  _ Riza mentioned his name in passing once, years ago, during a conversation with the unit about her time in sniper training at the Academy. 

The marksmanship instructor currently listed is Master Sergeant Lukas Coleman. Bresler is nowhere to be found. Roy drops the directory back down on the help desk and pinches the bridge of his nose. 

“Can I help you?”

Roy looks up in response to the librarian’s inquiry. She appears slightly concerned. He contemplates asking for a telephone book, or the records of Central City taxpayers. He could look up Bresler’s home address and then--

And then what? 

His fists ache to lash out, striking against the hard bone of a jaw or nose. His fingers ache to  _ snap.  _

He could hurt Bresler, like Bresler hurt Riza. (Because that is what it had been.  _ It wasn’t like that,  _ Riza insisted, her eyes filling up with tears.  _ It helped me. It got me through the most difficult time of my life.  _ Roy hadn’t expected her to say that, and it broke his heart. Riza may not be able to acknowledge what happened, but he can.) 

He has the terrible feeling that once he starts lashing out, once he starts venting his fury, he won’t be able to stop.

Roy shakes his head in curt reply to the librarian. He turns around and exits the library.

He sits in his car. He doesn’t turn the lights on or start the car. He rests his forehead against the steering wheel for a few moments. He feels helpless. He feels so completely, utterly useless. 

Roy misses Hughes with sudden, devastating intensity, so sharply that he almost sobs once. (Just as Riza had, after he embraced her. She had been so shaken by the experience of confiding her secret. She had been scared to tell him, and that cuts him to the core. There is very little on this earth that scares Riza, his brave Lieutenant.) 

This is something he would have gone to Hughes with. He wouldn’t have revealed details, for the sake of Riza’s privacy, but he would have called Hughes and asked, _ what should I do? _

He will never be able to turn to Hughes for advice, for a listening ear, ever again.

Roy wipes at the corners of his eyes. The pain of Hughes’ absence compounds with the pain of what Riza shared with him, and it takes all his effort to hold on to his composure.

He could visit Hughes’ grave and talk to him there. He has done that many, many times over the past months. 

Still, he hesitates. His nerves are worn in a way that makes the idea of visiting the cemetery and being confronted with the reminder of what has been lost (Hughes’ measured, reasonable tone of voice, his hand on his shoulder, the empathy on his face), too difficult to bear. 

Roy just sits, for another several minutes. Then he starts up the car and drives to the liquor store. He buys a bottle of Islay dry gin for tonight. After a moment of hesitation (Riza would disapprove of this. Hughes would, too), he adds a bottle of Hendrick’s as well.

It’s a short drive to the hospital. Roy tucks the bottle into the discreet brown paper shopping bag, covers the mouth of the bag with his scarf, and makes his way up to the rehabilitation unit. The lights are dimmed, and the normally bustling hallways are still. A lone nurse sits at the nurse’s station, writing notes in a chart.

“Good evening, Iris,” Roy greets. 

Iris looks up, startled, from her chart. “Oh, good evening, Colonel. Visiting hours are over for the night.”

“I know.” He puts on his most affable smile. “We’ll keep it down. I promise that none of your other patients will be disturbed.” 

Iris sighs, relenting. “All right, then. Go on. He’s awake - or he was, when I last checked half an hour ago.”

Roy knocks twice on the door to Havoc’s hospital room, and waits to be invited before stepping inside. Havoc blinks, marking the page in his book with a finger and shutting it. “Colonel?” 

Roy recognizes the book as one of Riza’s. “You don’t have to call me that anymore, you know,” he points out, taking a seat at his bedside. 

“You know what they say about old habits.” Havoc folds the edge of the page and sets the book down on the bedside table. “What brings you here at twenty-three hundred hours on a work night? Is everything okay?”

Roy slumps. He had forgotten it was a work night. He leans down, retrieving the bottle of gin from the bag. “I just wanted to have a drink with an old friend. Up for it?”

Havoc grins, and the expression lights up his face. Roy hasn’t seen him smile like that since before the night at the Third Laboratory. “I haven’t had anything stronger than apple juice since Breda left. Thanks, Colonel.”

Roy looks at the bottle, dismayed. “I just realized I didn’t bring glasses.”

“Doesn’t matter. There are a bunch of paper cups over there by the sink.”

Roy fetches them, eyeing the tiny, flimsy cups skeptically. He fills Havoc’s cup first, and then his own. “To your recovery,” he says, toasting his former Second Lieutenant. 

Havoc nods his gratitude, lifting his cup. The two of them drink, and Roy relishes the way the liquor burns down his throat. It is sweet, familiar relief, as it always is.

Havoc looks on the verge of tears. “That is so good.”

“I like the juniper.” Roy refills their cups. “How is your therapy coming along?”

Havoc doesn’t wince at the question like he used to, or glare at the wheelchair sitting on the other side of his bed. “It’s been good. The aquatic therapy especially.”

Roy frowns. “Will it be a problem for you to transfer back East, where you won’t have access to such things?”

“My parents are installing a pool out back, behind the house. It’s not going to be as big or fancy as the one here, but it’ll be a huge help anyway.” Havoc leans back against the pillows. “I still can’t believe they’re going to all that trouble. I told them not to bother. It’s more than I deserve.”

“It’s exactly what you deserve,” Roy corrects. “Tell them to get in touch with me if…” 

He trails off, a little awkwardly. Havoc’s family owns a successful chain of general stores, true, but he’s also one of four children. His sisters are all younger than him, and they are either in university already or about to enroll. Tuition isn’t exactly cheap. 

“It’ll be fine,” Havoc replies, his face slightly red. “But thanks, regardless.”

They drink in silence for a little while. It is a small relief to know that Havoc’s progress won’t be impeded when he moves back East. One less thing to worry about. 

Havoc clears his throat, setting his cup aside. “Has something happened, Colonel?” he asks. His shoulders are tense, his hands curled into fists on his lap. “To anyone on the unit?”

“What?” Roy replies, taken aback by the question. “No. Everyone’s fine.”

“All right.” Havoc relaxes somewhat. “I just wondered. You look like you’ve had a rough night.”

“I’m fine,” Roy says automatically. 

Havoc takes his cup, and pours himself another drink. “I know it’s not the same,” he says, without looking up from his liquor. He doesn’t have to explain his meaning. “But I’m here, if there’s anything you want to talk about.”

Roy takes a sip of his drink. His reflex, his instinct, is to brush off the offer.  _ I’m fine. Everything is fine.  _

As fond as he is of his subordinates, as much as he cares for them, he has never been able to confide in them as equals, with the same openness he did with Hughes. This isn't a reflection on the men themselves. Havoc, Breda, Falman, and Fuery are four of the best men he has ever met. They are all as good, kind, and principled, as Hughes. Be that as it may, they were still his subordinates, his charges, his responsibilities. He had no right to burden them with his thoughts and feelings on personal matters. 

But Havoc isn’t his subordinate any longer. Maybe that changes the way they have always related to one another.

Roy exhales, and looks out the darkened window. He clears his throat, trying to gather himself. “I found out tonight that someone close to me was mistreated,” he says, as levelly as he can. 

Havoc watches him warily. “That’s… that must be upsetting.” 

Roy scoffs at the understatement of it. He stands up, restless energy coursing through him, and paces the length of the room. “I hate that it happened,” he confesses. “I wish I could have stopped it. It wasn’t even possible for me to do so, but I still wish I could have stopped it. That I could have protected - this person.”

Havoc’s brows draw together, his concern apparent. “Is she all right?”

“I didn’t say it was a she.” Roy gestures helplessly. He’s starting to feel a little lightheaded. “This happened years ago, in any case. I just learned about it now. She’s--”

Roy stops. “What?” Havoc asks. He looks almost afraid to hear the answer. Nonsense flirtations aside, he genuinely cares about Hawkeye. Everyone in the unit does.

He returns to Havoc’s bedside, and he plucks at a chip in the paint of the rail at the foot of the bed. “I don’t think she even understands the extent of what happened. The - seriousness of it.” 

(How disturbing it was. How two men in a position of power over her, men she had liked and trusted, took advantage of that relationship to get what they wanted from her. Riza had placed the blame solely on herself.  _ It was my choice, on both counts. I initiated it. I allowed it to happen. _ He’s seen her interact with Lieutenant Colonel Reid before, when Reid and a few other officers from South City Command visited East City Command some years ago. Riza had been at ease around him. He’s heard her talk about Bresler before, and there had been nothing in her tone to betray any hard feelings.) 

Havoc swallows. “Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe that’s how this person protects herself.”

It’s an unusually astute observation, and Roy lets it sink in for a little while. 

“I hate that there were no consequences.” It’s a relief to give voice to the fury that has simmered within him ever since his conversation with Riza. “I hate it, Havoc. She’s been burdened by what happened, by guilt and shame and pain that wasn’t hers to carry, and I fucking loathe that the - other parties - haven’t faced any consequences for their actions.” Roy flexes his hands and takes a deep breath, struggling to calm himself. 

Havoc musses his hair, deep in thought. “Are there any legal ways of getting those consequences? Like - trials, or hearings, or something?”

He had considered it, briefly. Both Reid and Bresler had violated the anti-fraternization laws with Riza, and it had been an even more egregious violation considering her status as a cadet. Both of them would receive immediate dishonorable discharges. Roy shakes his head. “I doubt she would be amenable to that. Confidentiality aside, rumors would spread, and this would drag her reputation through the mud.” 

Havoc grimaces, recognizing the truth in the words. 

Roy resumes pacing. “There’s only one way I see for them to face consequences for what they did. They’ve gotten off scot-free for all these years.”

“No,” Havoc interrupts, with uncharacteristic force. He actually points at Roy. “No, there isn’t. Don’t even--” He glares, lowering his voice to a furious whisper. “You want to be the President of this country, don’t you? Then don’t even finish that sentence. Don’t even think about doing what you’re thinking about doing.” 

Roy pauses, struck by the vehement rebuke. Then he sighs, returning to his seat, and sinks down in it. “Then what am I going to do?” he asks. The sensation of helplessness returns, threatening to drown him. “I can’t erase what happened. How can I make this better for her?” 

“There’s only one thing you can do,” Havoc says simply. “Don’t hurt her. She’s been through enough.” 

Roy stiffens. “I would never.” 

Havoc gives him a long look, and Roy is uncomfortably aware of the memory of raising his voice to Riza, chastising her to the point she was near tears, the morning after the incident at the Third Laboratory. Havoc had been there for all of that. He made a comment, when Riza stayed away from the hospital until the following day, after his dismissal of her -  _ you must have really hurt her feelings, Colonel.  _

Roy averts his gaze. “I won’t.” His throat aches with repressed tears. “I’ll never hurt her.”

“That’s all you can do,” Havoc repeats. He regards Roy with quiet empathy. “I’m sorry that she went through that.”

“Yes,” Roy manages to say. “I am, too.” 

He stands up, a little unsteadily. “Keeping you up until midnight and smuggling in alcohol - I’ll be banned from visiting again, I’m sure. And you’ll be useless at your morning therapy session. Sorry for all this, Havoc.” 

Havoc shrugs. “Ah, my first therapy session isn’t until eight-hundred hours. I can still get a good seven and a half hours and sleep this off. Don’t worry about it.” 

Roy takes the bottle of gin. A good amount remains. “I’m going to hide this in the top drawer of the bedside table for you. Try to wait until seventeen-hundred hours until you break into it again.”

“You know, Colonel, you’re not so bad,” Havoc remarks. 

Roy smiles his first genuine smile of the night. “You’re not a waste of oxygen either.” He raises a hand in farewell. “Good night. I’ll stop by this weekend.” 

“Uh, are you sure you should be driving?” Havoc calls, as he leaves.

Roy considers it. He’d had two glasses of wine at Riza’s apartment, and then the gin here… But the roads are empty at this time of night, and he’ll go slow. “I’ll be fine.”

He heads home, alone. 

* * *

_to be continued_

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I mentioned in my last interlude that it would be the only time we would get to see Roy's point of view in the story. Considering the subject matter of the next chapter, though, I thought this would be a good juxtaposition to what comes next. 
> 
> It was saddening to think about Riza and Reid and Bresler through Roy's eyes, an outside perspective. We saw all of that through Riza's perspective, and she herself never fully internalized the uncomfortable realities Roy brought up in this chapter. That she trusted Reid and Bresler, she was very young, and she was at a very low and vulnerable point emotionally and mentally, and all that put together paints a heartbreaking picture. 
> 
> Neither Reid or Bresler had predatory intentions toward Riza when they first met her. Neither of them initially set out with the purpose of trying to get her to sleep with them. They told themselves they cared about her as a friend and teammate, as a student, as a person. But they let things develop in an unhealthy way, they let themselves come to think of her in a way they knew they shouldn't have, and they ultimately crossed lines that never should have been crossed. It should have been very clear to them that what was happening was not good or healthy for Riza, but they crossed those lines anyway, and kept crossing them. 
> 
> I also enjoyed writing the interaction between Roy and Havoc, and Roy's grief over missing his best friend. 
> 
> As always, I would love to hear your thoughts. The next chapter is up as well.


	16. fourteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Important note: Excerpts of the dialogue and events in this chapter are taken from the manga and Brotherhood; they are not original content.

The entire plan resides in Riza’s mind as a neatly organized, step-by-step list of components. Secure (abduct) the First Lady and hold her until daybreak. Engage Central Command forces in combat in the western sector of the city. Join forces with Roy’s old squadron from Ishval. Get Mrs. Bradley to issue a public statement blaming the current government for betraying the Bradley family. Work in cooperation with Roy’s old squadron, her own unit, and Rebecca to proceed through Central City sector by sector and destabilize each company of Central soldiers. Take a temporary retreat to the outskirts of the city to reload their weapons.

Celine Bradley’s abduction is the aspect of the plan that causes Riza the most concern. Not due to the details of the capture - the First Lady only has two guards, and it will be no real difficulty to subdue them and secure Mrs. Bradley. The fact that this has to be a part of the plan at all gives her pause. Mrs. Bradley is a civilian. She is completely unaware of what her son is, and they have no evidence that she is aware of what her husband is. Before they were separated, Riza spent hours in discussion with her Colonel, speculating on the extent of what Mrs. Bradley knew about the Fuhrer. 

_ I don’t think she knows anything, Colonel,  _ Riza insisted.  _ I’ve interacted with her far more than you have. I see her at the Presidential mansion at least once a week, and she always takes the time to speak with me. My intuition tells me that she doesn’t know what her husband really is. The way she talks about him… She genuinely adores him. Surely she couldn’t feel that way for a homunculus.  _

Roy shook his head, unconvinced.  _ They’ve been married for thirty years, and together for longer than that. There’s no way she doesn’t know that something is amiss. As the First Lady of this nation, a statement from her in condemnation of the existing government - and in support of the change of power - carries a lot of weight.  _

_ We could keep her under house arrest at the mansion,  _ Riza argued.  _ Fuery could easily rig up a communication array there and tap into Central Public Radio.  _

Roy considered it briefly.  _ No. We should keep her with our unit as we proceed through the city, to serve as a hostage.  _ He caught the look on her face.  _ What? _

_ I don’t like hearing you talk about keeping hostages so casually, Colonel. Especially with regard to a civilian woman in her sixties.  _

Roy remained unfazed by her protest.  _ We’re executing a coup, Lieutenant. Certain things have to be done.  _

_ Why not a high-ranking general or two, then?  _ Riza countered.  _ People who we know are aware of the truth? Fox and Gardner are Lieutenant Generals in on the conspiracy. Any Central Command soldiers we encounter would never act in a way that would threaten their superior officers.  _

_ No,  _ Roy said, again.  _ It’ll be harder to take Fox or Gardner. _

_ It won’t be any harder than securing the First Lady. Neither of them have personal guards like the First Lady does.  _

_ It’s not happening, Lieutenant,  _ Roy replied, an air of finality to his words.  _ We’re using the First Lady. Bradley showed no reservations about using you as a hostage against me. He reveled in how helpless you were to stop it, and how helpless I felt to save you.  _ He smiled, small and chilling.  _ Now I’ll do the same for his wife. We’ll see how he likes it.  _

Her Colonel left shortly afterward. Despite the late hour, Riza stayed up for quite a while after his departure. She cleaned her guns to calm herself, unsettled by the entire conversation. 

Roy might have believed she was being soft-hearted, or not pragmatic enough. But she would have been open to taking a hostage if the person was someone who was truly an enemy. Someone complicit in the schemes of the homunculi. The choice of Mrs. Bradley hadn’t been one motivated by reason or strategy. It simply revealed Roy’s desire to strike at the Fuhrer and hurt him in the same way he had been hurt. It felt malicious, and that was never a trait that Riza associated with her Colonel. 

Now, mere minutes before they move out to intercept the First Lady and her guards, Riza comes to stand beside her Colonel. “Sir,” she says, in an undertone. “Are you sure this is how you want to proceed?” 

“Yes,” Roy replies. He checks his silver pocketwatch instead of meeting her gaze. “Move out, Lieutenant.”

-

The plan to intercept Mrs. Bradley’s vehicle and neutralize her guards works as smoothly as they envisioned. They don’t have to fire a single shot. Breda ties the guards up, throwing them underneath a tree, and Riza approaches the First Lady’s vehicle. Through the windows, she sees Mrs. Bradley shrinking back against her seat, hand pressed to her mouth in terror. 

Riza opens the door, and remembers a moment too late that her gun is still in her right hand. Mrs. Bradley notices the weapon, and she recoils, even more frightened now. 

“I’m sorry that this had to happen at such a late hour, Mrs. Bradley.” Riza speaks calmly, evenly, hoping that her non-threatening tone will help set the woman a little more at ease.

“Lieutenant Hawkeye?” The look of utter betrayal that the First Lady wears stings a little. “What’s going on? Why are you doing this?”

Her Colonel strides over to the car, opening the other passenger door, and Mrs. Bradley gasps. “Please forgive us for startling you like this,” he says formally. “I need you to come with me, Madame Fuhrer. We have no intention of harming you.”

Roy offers her his hand. Riza sees that he removed his gloves before approaching the First Lady, disarming himself. Mrs. Bradley still cringes away from him, her distrust evident. 

“Please,” Roy stresses. “It’s important.” 

To Riza’s surprise, the First Lady turns to her then, as if seeking assurance. “You can trust him,” Riza promises. 

After one long moment, Mrs. Bradley takes her Colonel’s hand. He helps her out of the car, as gentle and courteous as he would be if assisting Madame Christmas. She stumbles, and holds onto his arm for support. Riza and Roy exchange one glance, silently and mutually agreeing that there will be no need for restraints.

Breda and Fuery, still masked, raise their hands in polite greeting to the First Lady. She settles in the backseat, sandwiched between both of them, trembling with shock, pulling her violet shawl close around her. A dozen questions are written across her face, but she doesn’t give voice to any of them. She bites her lip instead, looking between Riza, Breda, Fuery, and the Colonel. They remain in tense silence as they drive back to Central City and return to the warehouse. 

“You two stay up here,” Roy orders Breda and Fuery. “I’ll get the Lieutenant and the First Lady secured.”

Breda and Fuery salute him. Mrs. Bradley balks at the reference to being  _ secured.  _ She backs away a few paces, bumping into Riza, as Roy opens the hidden door that reveals the underground passageway. Riza places a hand on her shoulder to steady her, and Mrs. Bradley flinches back from the touch. “It’s all right. It’s perfectly safe down there.”

Roy leads them down the short, rickety staircase to the passageway. The torches Breda and Fuery lit earlier in the day are still ablaze, partially illuminating the space. Plenty of shadows remain, and the sight makes Riza’s skin crawl. They have no idea of Pride’s current location. He could easily materialize here in order to save his mother. 

Roy picks up on the way she eyes the shadows. He snaps his fingers, and Mrs. Bradley grabs Riza’s arm. Several orbs of flame crackle into view, banishing the shadows for a long stretch of the passageway. “There. That should help.”

Riza nods, grateful for the assistance. “Thank you, Colonel.” 

“I can stay down here with both of you,” Roy offers. 

“That won’t be necessary.” Riza glances at the First Lady. “We’ll be fine here.”

“All right. Signal if you need me.”

He climbs up, leaving them alone, and the door clicks shut behind him. Mrs. Bradley shrinks away from her, wary, and then sinks to the floor, her back against the wall. She draws her knees to her chest and wraps her arms around them. There is something child-like and vulnerable about the posture, something almost defeated. 

Riza had prepared for the long hours of waiting here until sunrise. She tucked a small knapsack down here earlier, setting it just across from the foot of the stairs. She retrieves it now, withdrawing a large water bottle and a package of trail mix. She offers both to Mrs. Bradley. “Here. I wish I could give you some tea, but this is all we have.”

The First Lady wavers, and then accepts. “Thank you.” 

Riza sits across from her, careful to keep a distance that will help the First Lady feel safe. Mrs. Bradley takes a few sips of her water and a few halfhearted bites of the trail mix, before setting both aside. Her eyes fill up with tears, and the tears spill over. “Have you done anything to harm my husband or Selim?” 

The First Lady must have no idea about the train explosion in the East. “No.” Riza is grateful that the response is completely honest. “We haven’t even laid eyes on them in days.” 

Mrs. Bradley studies her, searching for any sign of untruth. “Why?” she asks. Her voice cracks. “Why is all of this happening?”

The FIrst Lady’s genuine confusion is pitiful to witness. Her instincts about Mrs. Bradley’s ignorance had been correct. It is almost worse, this way. Would it be better, kinder, to tell her the truth now?  _ This is happening because your husband and your son are monsters, in the truest sense of the word. They are willing to doom every innocent person in this country in order to serve their own ends. We’re doing what needs to be done in order to save Amestris from them. This will benefit you, too, because you’ll be free of the lie that you’ve been living.  _

_ No,  _ Riza decides, her heart heavy. It isn’t her place to tell this woman that the past thirty years of her life, her deep love for her husband and her son, had been a lie. 

“Is this because of what happened in Ishval?”

Riza blinks, taken aback by the question. “What?”

“The Flame Alchemist. The Hawk’s Eye. I know that both of you served there.” Mrs. Bradley takes a deep breath, as if steeling herself. “I know that certain soldiers had...moral concerns about what happened. Like Major Armstrong.” 

Riza swallows over her dry throat. It is the truth. Her Colonel worked toward this goal for more than half a decade before their unit even discovered the existence of the homunculi. It was in Ishval that Roy first decided that he would supplant Fuhrer Bradley and burn the entire corrupt structure of the military to the ground. 

“Yes,” she says shortly. “It is. What the Fuhrer ordered in Ishval was unconscionable.”

Mrs. Bradley stares back at her, her demeanor unreadable. “For the Ishvalans, the victims, above all else,” Riza continues. “But also for the Amestrian soldiers who were duty-bound to carry out those orders, at the cost of their humanity and their souls.” 

The First Lady examines her hands, folded together in her lap. “Would it surprise you to know that I had reservations about it too?” she asks, finally. “Not that - not that my husband consulted me on the matter. I didn’t know about the signing of Executive Order 3066 until after the fact. But when I learned of it, I was appalled.”

This is news to her. Every time Riza encountered Mrs. Bradley, she spoke of her husband with absolute trust and deference. She never imagined that there would be any matter where the First Lady disagreed with the Fuhrer. 

“How could you stay with him, then?” Riza asks, uncaring of how bold, how forward, the question is. She is currently holding the First Lady prisoner; all the normal social niceties no longer apply at this point. “How could you continue to live alongside someone who was so callous and cruel?”

“Because he wasn’t,” Mrs. Bradley responds simply. “He wasn’t callous, or cruel. He was the most gentle and kind man I ever knew.” She smiles, tiny and sad. “He was willing to resort to extreme methods in response to the stability of our nation being threatened. That’s what he told me. That’s how I justified it.”

Riza is at a loss for words.  _ He was the most gentle and kind man I ever knew.  _ How could someone feel that way about the personification of Wrath? She heard Ling and Lan Fan’s story about what it had been like to face Wrath in combat. She heard Roy talk about how fearsome Wrath was. 

(The memories of Ishval slam into her, with the sudden, stunning impact of a fist to the face. Riza remembers seeing Roy lift his right hand and snap, through the scope of her sniper rifle. Remembers watching explosion after explosion devastate the landscape beneath her, laying waste to entire districts and every single living being trying to flee those buildings and streets.

He had been terrifying. She has never allowed herself to forget how powerful her Colonel is. How dangerous, how destructive, he can be. It is why she has always kept a watchful eye on his temper. Roy’s temper has always been more fierce and intense than she would like. He feels everything so deeply, including anger. 

And at the same time, she has thought of him as the most gentle and kind man she has ever known.)

Mrs. Bradley regards her with quiet empathy. “Do you understand, Lieutenant Hawkeye?”

“No.” Riza stammers on the word, just once. “I could never accept such cruel behavior from my partner. From my commanding officer. From anyone I choose to follow. I would have walked away then, without hesitation.” 

Mrs. Bradley doesn’t point out the telltale lapse. She folds her arms, and the look she gives Riza is sympathetic. 

“What?” Riza asks, aware of the defensiveness in her tone.

“Are you telling me that you’ve never disagreed with your Colonel on important matters? You’ve stood by him, clearly. You haven’t walked away.”

Fragments of memory stir within her, of conflicts large and small. Roy’s recruitment of Edward into the military as a State Alchemist. Deceiving Edward about Maria Ross. Proceeding with the plan to use Barry the Chopper as bait for the homunculi. Telling her that he had no compunction about using the Philosopher’s Stone held by Dr. Marcoh to heal Havoc’s spinal injury. His insistence on confiding his suspicions about Fuhrer Bradley to General Raven. That particular maneuver disbanded their entire unit for seven months, and put them all at risk of harm. 

“It’s different.” It is a struggle to keep herself from snapping. “The differences we’ve had are nowhere even near the scale of what your husband ordered in Ishval.” 

“For now,” Mrs. Bradley replies succinctly. 

Riza remains silent. 

“Regardless, this isn’t the way to proceed with things, Lieutenant,” Mrs. Bradley says, and she sounds genuinely worried. “You and your Colonel don’t approve of a single decision my husband made, a single executive order, so you choose to overthrow the entire government?”

Riza bristles at the simplification. “A  _ single executive order _ that resulted in the genocide of an entire race. Tens of thousands of innocent people.” 

“I understand that you disagree with decisions my husband has made, but this is not the way to respond. You’re setting a dangerous precedent.” Mrs. Bradley wrings her hands. “I assume your goal is to establish Colonel Mustang as the President. Well, as the President of this nation, your Colonel, your husband - whatever he’s going to be to you - will make dozens of unpopular decisions every week. Decisions the people of the country won’t approve of. Decisions even his soldiers may not agree with. You’re setting a precedent for his soldiers, the soldiers who are supposed to loyally serve him, to seize power from him if they disagree with his orders. Today it’s my family and I. Tomorrow it will be the two of you.” 

Riza draws back, disconcerted by the idea. She and Roy have discussed the fact that they will face resistance to the actions they plan to take. Restoring power to the Parliament, rebuilding Ishval, reforming Amestris into a democracy, reduction of armaments, and creating a system where the perpetrators of war crimes are put under trial - none of these things will be supported by the majority of the military. 

They have spent countless hours in conversation about how to win the hearts and minds of the people of Amestris. Preventing the military from outright revolt against Fuhrer-President Roy Mustang will be more difficult. They planned to imprison Bradley’s loyalists. The issue is that for every loyalist they know of, there could be dozens more that they aren’t aware of - even with their intelligence network. Madame Christmas and her informants don’t operate in every city across Amestris. 

“Stop this,” Mrs. Bradley pleads. To Riza’s intense surprise, she reaches out and takes her hand, gripping it tightly. “It’s not too late. Stop this at once, and I promise you I’ll intercede with my husband to spare your life. I’ll ask that you be exiled somewhere far outside of our borders.”

Riza frowns. The Fuhrer would never agree with her request, but it’s interesting that the First Lady would even make that offer. Especially because the offer seems to be earnest. “Why would you do that?”

“Because I feel…” Mrs. Bradley trails off. “I know it must sound presumptuous, to compare myself to such a decorated soldier, but I see myself in you, somehow.”

“I appreciate your kindness, but I’ve made my choices, and I stand by them.” Riza gently extricates her hand from the First Lady’s grip.

Mrs. Bradley gives her a long look, and then she exhales, pushing a stray lock of hair behind her ear. Her hand trembles. “My dear,” she says. “You’re making a mistake. He is going to lead you to your doom.”

The warning evokes Grumman’s, before her reassignment to Central City.  _ Mustang won’t hesitate to burn it all down. Make sure you don’t get caught in the flames.  _

“I would follow him into hell itself, if he asked that of me.” 

Despite the heat emanating from the torches, and from the spheres of flame Roy generated to safeguard them from Pride, Riza feels cold. 

\- 

The First Lady eventually falls into a fitful sleep. Riza paces back and forth in front of her, in an attempt to burn off some of her restless energy. The conversation with Mrs. Bradley left her on edge. It’s uncharacteristic for her to be so agitated, but she wants to vent her frustration on a punching bag, or better yet, a target at the shooting range. 

The door at the top of the stairs creaks open. Fuery practically tiptoes down the stairs, careful not to wake the First Lady. “I’m here to relieve you, Lieutenant,” he whispers. “The Colonel wants you to accompany him on some business. Breda’s going to keep guard at the warehouse, and I’ll stay down here.”

Riza checks her watch. It is two in the morning. There is nothing they planned for this night except to keep the First Lady secure. “Did the Colonel explain what he was referring to?”

Fuery shakes his head, drawing his hooded cloak closer around him. “He didn’t, Lieutenant.”

“All right, then. Be careful here, Master Sergeant.” 

Riza returns to the warehouse. Her Colonel and Breda stand near the back door, engaged in a hushed conversation. Roy pulls his car keys from a pocket of his coat when he catches sight of her. “Breda, we’ll be back in an hour.”

Riza and Breda exchange a look of identical displeasure at the fact that Roy is departing from the plan like this. “Colonel, we shouldn’t leave the premises at this time,” Riza cautions.

“I’ll be fine, Lieutenant. I have you with me.”

Roy heads for the door. Breda gives Riza a helpless sort of shrug, as if to say,  _ you tried.  _ Riza grimaces. 

The streets of the warehouse district are empty at this hour, but Riza scans the rooftops for snipers as she and Roy duck into his car. She keeps her gun ready at hand as he drives, and her attention on the road, checking ahead of them, behind, to the left, to the right. It would be easy to throw their plan into jeopardy right now by having a tank - or even a regular military vehicle - plow into their car while they cross an intersection. They have only been in transit for fifteen minutes, but it feels like twice that. 

“How is the First Lady taking everything?” Roy asks, breaking the quiet in the car.

For some reason, Riza doesn’t want to relay what she and Mrs. Bradley had spoken about. “She’s fine,” she replies shortly. “Concerned about her husband and her son.”

“I am, too.” Roy’s grip on the steering wheel tightens. “For different reasons.”

They turn onto Rosemary Street, and Riza suddenly realizes where they are. Roy drives them past the cemetery and parks the car in the back alley behind the funeral home, out of sight. He stares straight ahead. “I just had to…” 

Riza rests her hand on his arm, for just a moment. “Of course.”

They make their way to the cemetery. Cemeteries make her melancholy, under normal circumstances. They make her think of Mother, resting underneath the earth for more than twenty years now. They make her think of all the people buried there. How old, or how young, they were. What hopes and dreams they were able to see fulfilled, or had to leave unfulfilled. How many people they left behind. 

Riza thinks of Gracia, and of her own father, who had retreated so completely into himself after Mother passed. She thinks of Elicia, and then she remembers herself, as a little girl. How she wept over Mother every night in bed, clutching her stuffed dog and sobbing until her entire body shook. Her steps almost falter. 

(She tells herself that Elicia has a loving mother. As much as Elicia will suffer, as much pain as she will bear, she won’t have to do it alone. She will have Gracia to help her through it.)

Riza makes herself bury those thoughts. She returns to her concerns of a few minutes ago. The concerns about enemies crouched in the shadows of headstones, or concealed behind the immense stone bases of the statues scattered throughout the cemetery grounds. Somehow, those thoughts and considerations are easier to process than the ones that came after.

“You go ahead, sir,” Riza says. “I’ll do a check of the perimeter.”

Roy looks like he wants to argue. Then Riza sees the moment of understanding - that she has to be his bodyguard in this moment, not his girlfriend or companion. He nods once, resigned, and continues to Hughes’ grave without her.

Riza patrols the area surrounding Hughes’ grave. The cemetery is deserted at this hour. Silent as the grave, as they say. She shivers. She climbs a small hill that gives her a good vantage point of the cemetery from all angles, as well as the immediately neighboring streets, which remain empty. 

Roy stands in front of Hughes’ headstone for quite a while, his hands curled into fists at his side, head bowed. The sight fills Riza with grief. 

Her Colonel had no father, no brothers, no uncles. He had no significant male figures in his life at all, until he met her own father at sixteen. And of course, they had their painful falling-out two years later. Roy met Hughes immediately afterward. In time, the two of them became like brothers. As deeply as Roy cares for Havoc, Breda, Falman, and Fuery, the relationship is different, by virtue of them being his subordinates.  _ They’re my responsibility, as are you,  _ Roy told her, many times over the years. 

The bond he shared with Hughes was different. It is as profound as her own bond with Rebecca. Perhaps even more so. As compassionate and empathetic as Rebecca is, ultimately, she hadn’t been in Ishval. (And thank god for that. She wouldn’t have been able to survive it.) Rebecca understands the importance of their goals, as any reasonable person should, but she doesn’t  _ understand  _ in the same visceral way that she and Roy and Hughes did.

Riza knows there are things Roy shared with Hughes that he never did with her. At the time, she believed it was because she was his subordinate, and he felt it would be inappropriate to confide in her to that extent. ( _ I’m the one who needs to be strong for all of you -  _ something else Roy told her, years ago.) Now, she understands that there was likely another layer to that mistaken belief. Until recently, she never shared the most painful, shameful things about her past and thoughts and feelings with him, because of the love she felt, and the fear of being judged by him and found unworthy, or pathetic. Roy likely felt the same way about opening up to her. 

So he turned to Hughes for a great deal of things. The alcohol. The depression. The guilt. The worst of the anger. In losing Hughes, Roy lost his best friend, his brother, his closest confidant. The only person in the world he was able to truly express himself, truly unburden himself, with. It had been a loss of unspeakable magnitude.

Riza quells the sorrow before it can overwhelm her. Perhaps one good thing about what happened between them earlier tonight is that it will enable Roy to be more open with her. Perhaps, in time, he will be as comfortable opening up to her as he was to Hughes. She would never judge him; never turn her back on him. She has always assured her Colonel of that, but maybe now he will really believe her. 

Riza checks her watch. They will need to leave soon in order to make it back to the warehouse within the hour Roy promised Breda. She doesn’t want Breda and Fuery to worry. She proceeds down the hill, her boots sinking into the damp grass, and approaches her Colonel. Roy doesn’t move, doesn’t look back over his shoulder. It is slightly concerning that he is so immersed in his thoughts. If she had been an enemy, he could have easily been shot in the back. 

“Colonel,” Riza prompts softly, coming to stand behind him. Roy glances at her, startled, jolted out of whatever he was contemplating. “We should head back and start getting ready.”

“Right.” Roy remains by the gravestone, standing rooted to the spot.

Riza opens her mouth, even though she’s unsure of what to say, what to do. No words seem sufficient. Roy finally turns to her, and he gives her a small smile, though it seems to take an effort. “Okay. Let’s move out.”

They proceed through the cemetery, retracing the path they walked earlier. Riza remains a half-step behind her Colonel, watching his back, but she can still see how his features settle into melancholy preoccupation. This isn’t a good sign, either. He needs to be as clear-headed as possible for the day ahead of him. She knows that this sounds cold, but in the battlefield, even one moment of distraction can have fatal consequences. 

“Sir,” Riza says. “Is there something on your mind?”

Roy slows his steps somewhat, falling into step beside her, instead of slightly ahead. He stays silent for several paces, but then sighs. “I just...felt a little helpless, Lieutenant.”

Riza knows how he hates feeling helpless. Useless. It is something that both of them have in common. “How so, Colonel?” 

“All of this will be over by this time tomorrow. We’ll have a new government, and we can begin our work. The people of Amestris will be saved from what Bradley has planned for them.” Roy tilts his head up to the inky black sky. “But Hughes will still be gone. Nothing I can do, nothing I will  _ ever  _ do, will ever bring him back to this world. To Gracia and Elicia. He loved them so much.” 

It must be difficult, for someone as powerful and capable and intelligent as her Colonel, to experience this profound sense of powerlessness. Riza is all too familiar with feeling helpless and useless. She has known this feeling intimately since she was a little girl. (Father taught her that. It had been one of the only things he taught her.) Roy, on the other hand, likely hasn’t felt this way since he was a young child.

“Yes,” Riza acknowledges. “But you can know that what you do, now and in the future, will make him proud.”

Roy exhales, short and sharp. “That’s not enough.”

Riza knows this all too well, after twenty-one years of milestones and moments Mother missed.  _ I know she’s not here to see this,  _ she has thought to herself, a dozen times,  _ but she would be happy for me.  _ “It doesn’t seem like enough, but it has to be.”

They return to the car. It is pleasantly warm, after the chilly spring night. Roy puts the keys into the ignition, but he doesn’t turn on the lights or start the car, and they sit together in the dark. 

“I started visiting Gracia and Elicia every couple of weeks, after the unit got reassigned,” he says. “For tea or dinner, and to play with Elicia and talk to her. I thought that might help her.” 

Riza rests a hand on his arm. “That was kind of you, Colonel. How are they doing?”

“Hanging on.” Roy shifts in his seat. “Elicia doesn’t cry at preschool every day anymore. Gracia’s off the sleeping pills.”

_ Elicia doesn’t cry at preschool every day anymore.  _ Riza bites the inside of her cheek at the words. At the mental image of Gracia unable to sleep at night for missing her husband. 

“It was always hard to see her,” Roy says abruptly. “Gracia. She’s trying her best for Elicia, but it’s like she’s a shell of herself.”

Riza noticed the same thing at the funeral. It shook her. She had embraced Elicia, and held Gracia’s ice-cold hands, and wondered what hell it would be, to bury the person you loved. She nods now, wordlessly. 

“I hate Hughes’ killer for doing that to them, Lieutenant,” Roy murmurs. “He didn’t just take Hughes. He ruined their lives. It’ll never be the same for them, after this.”

“I know.” Riza’s throat hurts. She thinks of the  _ before  _ and  _ after  _ of her life. Before Mother and after. She healed, in time, but that demarcation of  _ before  _ and  _ after  _ Mother’s passing will always be there, just as it will be for Elicia. For Gracia… Riza remembers her own life before Roy, but she can’t even begin to conceptualize an  _ after.  _ It is as incomprehensible, as impossible, as the possibility of Black Hayate beginning to speak, or the sky turning bright green. 

To her surprise, Roy takes her hand, intertwining their fingers together, palm to palm. They should really be heading back to the warehouse, but Riza doesn’t resist. She needs the comfort, just as much as he does.

“When I saw Gracia…” Roy trails off. He swallows hard, and Riza watches the movement of his throat. “I don’t know how she survived it. I wouldn’t be able to move forward, if I lost you.”

The simple admission nearly makes her cry. “You have to, sir,” Riza replies, as calmly as she can. 

Roy just shakes his head. He holds her hand tighter, so tightly it almost hurts, and looks at her with something approaching desperation. “Please be careful today, Lieutenant.”

“I will,” Riza promises, at once. 

Roy releases her hand. Then he reaches out, curls his hand around the back of her neck, and draws her in for a kiss. Riza stiffens, surprised. Then she relaxes into the kiss, as Roy strokes his thumb up down the side of her neck in a gentle caress. (After seven years, it still doesn’t feel real that kisses with Roy are something that can exist in reality and not just in her dreams.) 

It isn’t like earlier, pressed between the wall behind her and Roy in front of her, chest-to-chest, arms wrapped around one another. Their bodies are separated by the distance between the passenger and the driver’s seats, the gear shift in between them. The heat and possessiveness is no different, though. They’re slower this time, savoring the press of lips and teeth and tongue, and Riza wishes that she could wrap her arms around Roy and let him pull her into his lap. 

She pulls away instead, aware that they need to get back to the warehouse before Breda and Fuery grow alarmed by their absence. She’s also aware that letting their guard down in order to make out in a car like a couple of teenagers would be an excellent way to get ambushed. “Now isn’t the time, Colonel.”

Roy rubs the back of his neck and sighs, and Riza catches the slightly regretful look that he gives the backseat of the car. “Right. Sorry.”

They begin the drive back to the warehouse. Roy holds the steering wheel with one hand, and holds her hand with the other, and Riza allows it. 

-

The new day breaks, and hour by hour, each aspect of the plan unfolds just as Riza and her Colonel envisioned. Riza’s muscles remain taut with tension, and there is a dull throbbing at the back of her neck. Just because events are developing as planned for now does not mean that their run of good luck will hold. She has to be prepared for every eventuality. 

After some hours of combat in Central City, they drive to a forest outside of the city in order to reload their weapons. Fuery rigs up a communications array in the back of the ice cream truck and taps into the Central Command soldiers’ secure radio lines. Every communication line coming from the city is a mess of panic and chaos, thanks to the emergence of the Briggs soldiers on the scene. Central Command soldiers have responded by blockading the city, preventing re-entry at most major entrance points. Running through a blockade would be possible, but news has spread of their unconventional method of travel. Every five minutes, Central Command soldiers advise their fellow troops to be on the lookout for an ice cream truck. 

Riza frowns, mulling over the complication. Their vehicle isn’t exactly inconspicuous. “Colonel,” she calls. “I think it’s going to be hard for us to get back into town.”

Her Colonel stands with his arms crossed a short distance away, scowling, lost in thought. “They said they’re looking for an ice cream truck?”

In a matter of moments, Roy completes a transmutation, transforming the exterior of the ice cream truck to one emblazoned with the cheerful logo of Central Meats. Their squad looks it over, nodding in approval. “The channels said that blockades are up at all  _ major  _ entrance points,” Charlie points out. “You all are more familiar with the city than we are. Any idea of where the most roundabout, out-of-the-way entrance point to Central is?”

“Approach via Braemar Boulevard,” Roy replies. “There’s no way that they set up a blockade there. Someone give me a map and I’ll point out where it is.”

True to her Colonel’s prediction, there is no blockade at Braemar Boulevard. There is just a small group of soldiers patrolling the area, rifles in hand, visibly on edge. They squint at the Central Meats truck as it passes, but they don’t signal for it to halt. A careless, stupid mistake. No unit at East, West, or South City Command - or especially Fort Briggs - would have made a similar misstep. Every military command center outside of Central City scoffs at the quality of the soldiers assigned to Central and the weak caliber of Central’s commanding officers, but all of that has worked in their favor today. 

“We would never have been able to pull this off in any other city,” Roy mutters, reading Riza’s mind. 

“Still, this alchemy stuff is pretty handy, isn’t it?” Maria asks, keeping her eyes trained on the road ahead of them. 

“It wasn’t difficult to change the truck’s appearance,” Roy says. “The fact that the soldiers didn’t ask us to stop to do a check of the vehicle anyway speaks to their incompetence.”

They pull to a stop in front of yet another entrance to the Third Laboratory, and Maria exhales in frustration. “We can’t get in here, either. North, south, east, west - the gates are all closed. What should we do now, force our way in?”

Riza eyes the small group of Central soldiers standing a short distance away. Three men. Three shots to the leg should drop them all in less than five seconds. She reloads her handgun, planning which one to target first, but Roy holds a hand up to stop her. “No. We’ll take a different route - a more subtle one.”

That doesn’t sound like him. Riza lowers her gun, keeping the Central soldiers in her peripherals. “Sir?” 

“We’ll split up here,” Roy orders Maria. “Take the rest of the team, and head to the place we discussed. The Lieutenant and I will proceed alone. Drive around the block and drop us off there. I don’t want these soldiers alerting others to be on the lookout for a meat truck.”

Maria complies immediately, stopping around the corner. “Good luck,” she says, saluting both of them. 

Riza gives her a grateful nod as she readies both of her handguns. She and her Colonel hop out of the truck, and it immediately speeds off in the direction of the Central City Radio Broadcast office. “Ready, Lieutenant?” Roy asks. 

“Yes, sir.”

She presses her front to the wall, peering around the corner at the small patrol of guards. Another rookie mistake - having three guards patrol the West Entrance as one group instead of splitting up to cover the most ground. Their backs are to her. “Your orders, Colonel?” she whispers. 

“If you shoot, the sound will alert the patrols at the other entrances and they’ll come rushing over here. The same goes for the sound of my alchemy. They’ll follow us into the laboratory and the basement, and that’s a complication we don’t need.” Roy is close behind her. “You’re pretty good at hand-to-hand combat. Let’s take them out like that. Even if they hear us coming, there’s no way that they can quick-draw like you.”

Riza pockets her guns. “Three on two? Are you sure?”

A faint smirk touches her Colonel’s lips. “Since you’re one of our two, I’d say we’re evenly matched with them. You take that guy on the far left, and I’ll take the other two.”

Riza raises an eyebrow wordlessly. Roy sighs. “...Fine. I’ll take the guy on the far left, and you’ll take the other two.”

“That’s better, sir. On three?”

Roy silently counts them off, and they strike. The soldiers turn, hearing their approach, but her Colonel’s prediction about their slow weapons draw was on point. Riza slams one soldier to the ground and kicks him in the groin hard, twice, ensuring he stays down. His eyes roll back, and he blacks out. One of the others draws on her. She takes his position in and lunges at him as fast as she can, grabbing his wrist and arm in a vice-like grip, twisting them behind his arm in a joint lock she learned back in the Academy. His gun falls uselessly to the concrete, and she kicks his knees out from under him. Riza grabs a handful of his hair and slams his head against the pavement once, with enough force to stun him. 

She whirls around to see that her Colonel has dispatched his soldier as well. The man lies senseless at Roy’s feet, and Roy rubs his knuckles, grimacing. He catches her watching him, and immediately flexes his hands and stands up straighter, masking any sign of discomfort. “Come on, Lieutenant.” 

They enter the Third Laboratory quickly, and a shiver of foreboding runs through her. That night they were last here, in early autumn, had been the most terrifying of her entire life. Riza’s hand is white-knuckled around her gun. The hallways of the laboratory are empty, thankfully. They rush down to the basement, retracing the steps they took seven months ago, and plunge into the darkened tunnel system underneath Central. 

The tunnels had been eerie enough in autumn, the darkness and gloom providing ample opportunities for enemies to conceal themselves. Now, knowing what she knows about Pride, Riza’s throat is tight and her heart pounds in her chest. She and Roy stick close together as they advance through the maze of hallways. They move deeper into the tunnels, and Roy tilts his head to the side, listening intently. “Do you hear that?"

Riza does. The telltale roar of alchemy mingles with distant shouts. There are only three other alchemists who know of this laboratory and its significance, and one of them is at Central Command providing backup to his sister and her men. She quickens her pace, nearly breaking into a run.

(Part of her remembers the last time she was here, when she had collapsed with grief, leaving Alphonse effectively alone against Lust. It was an unforgivable act of weakness that could have ended in his death. She won’t allow that to happen again.) 

_ You can’t protect them.  _ The cold voice speaks from the deepest recesses within her, reminiscent of her father’s tone.  _ You know that they’re not facing Central soldiers. If they were, there would be no fight at all. You won’t be any use to them, not with your skill set.  _

Riza ignores the voice, and Roy catches up to her. “Don’t run ahead of me like that,” he huffs. “We should stick together.”

A stab of remorse lances through her. It is her duty to watch her Colonel’s back, and she failed at that too. “I’m sorry, sir.”

Roy takes one look at her, and he must see the worry written on her features. “I’m sure they’re fine. And we’ll be right there to provide backup.” 

A thick barrier of stone closes off the room from the tunnel, but Riza can still hear Edward’s voice on the other side. He is shouting, his voice thick with anger. She rests a hand on the stone barrier, suppressing the frustration that rises in her. “This wasn’t here before.” 

Roy comes up beside her, inspecting the stone. “This is Fullmetal’s work. I’ll be able to take it down without a problem. Stand back - I don’t want you to get caught in the blast.”

Riza retreats, and Roy lifts his hand to snap. Before he does, he looks over his shoulder at her. “There’s only one reason he would have sealed this off. There’s something in there that he doesn’t want getting out. Be careful.”

She would have been touched by the concern, had he displayed it outside of the field. As it is, Riza almost resents the warning. She doesn’t need her Colonel worrying about her at a time like this. It will only distract him. “Yes, sir.”

Roy snaps his fingers, and the explosion is deafening. The stone door blasts to pieces, and plumes of smoke billow into the tunnel and into the room alike. Riza holds her breath, holds her gun at the ready, and she and her Colonel move in. Even with their visibility reduced to near zero, she can still sense Roy at her side. 

The smoke begins to dissipate, and Riza blinks hard in an attempt to dispel the stinging from her eyes. Edward’s distinctive red coat is the first thing she can make out. He crouches on the ground, head ducked to protect himself from the smoke. 

“Do you need me to lend you a hand, Fullmetal?” Roy asks, as casually as if this were just another field operation in East City. 

“Colonel?” Edward straightens, startled.

His voice is deeper now, but Riza’s attention only focuses on him for a fraction of a second, ensuring he is unharmed. She scans the rest of the room, assessing the situation. Confusion curls around her at the sight before them. Three chimeras are engaged in combat with an army of hideous, bone-white creatures. The creatures have long, spindly limbs and only one eye, located in the center of their foreheads, like the Cyclops of myth. But it’s their gaping, gnashing mouths that give Riza pause. They move with unearthly speed and agility, and the chimeras are barely able to hold them at bay. For each one of the creatures that the chimeras neutralize, a dozen more come pouring forth, out of the dark tunnel beyond. 

In all of the chaos, it takes her a moment to notice Scar. He fights alongside the chimeras, dispatching creature after creature with ruthless efficiency. Roy’s jaw drops. “Is that Scar? You make new friends wherever you go, Fullmetal.”

The horde of creatures advances toward the three of them, groaning and slavering with hunger. They are eerily similar to Gluttony, and sweat beads at Riza’s temples. She aims her gun point-blank at one of the creatures, running a mental calculation of how many bullets she has in her rifle and both of her handguns, and how many creatures there are. The numbers do not work in her favor.

Roy watches them, unfazed, and she can tell that he is planning something. “I can’t help but think of the last time we were here, Lieutenant,” he muses. “If I recall correctly, you were crying over me. It’s a shame I don’t get to see that softer side of you more often.” 

It is a promising sign that her Colonel can face this situation and make a joke. Whatever maneuver he has planned is going to be successful. Riza readies her finger on the trigger of her gun nevertheless. She can still help him. “The last thing I’m going to do is start crying for you now,” she returns evenly. “Water makes you useless.” 

Her Colonel winces. “You can talk later!” Scar shouts, punching one of the creatures and sending it flying. “Just kill these things!”

Roy turns on him. “Don’t you dare give me orders! Just because Fullmetal is working with you doesn’t mean--”

“He’s right,” Riza cuts in, taking aim at one of the approaching creatures. As reprehensible as she would normally find the idea of cooperating with Scar, they don’t need to be fighting enemies on two fronts. For now, Scar is their ally. Edward is fully aware of his crimes. If he allied with Scar nevertheless, he must have done so for a valid reason. “We need to start taking down these things.” 

She shoots one of the approaching creatures straight through the head. It flails and twitches convulsively, but it doesn’t collapse. It continues to shamble right toward them. “It won’t work, Lieutenant!” Edward yells, slamming the creature in the legs with his spear, sending it toppling to the ground. “Bullets won’t hurt them! They don’t even slow them down!”

The floored creature looks up at Edward and screams with nerve-chilling rage. Riza recoils, and she is back in her sniper tower with Gluttony, back in this room with Lust, both of them advancing on her, completely immune to her bullets. _Not again._ She is powerless, just like she had been then. Useless. Unable to defend herself, let alone her Colonel and Edward. “How else do we kill them?” she demands, and her voice quivers in a way that is so unlike her. 

“Are they homunculi?” Roy stares at the creatures intently, and then answers his own question. “No. They’re not healing themselves, but they’re not dying, either. They have to be powered by Philosopher’s Stones.” 

_ Philosopher’s Stones.  _ Riza translates that, as she always does, to  _ human souls.  _ Human souls, used to sustain mindless, ravenous abominations like these creatures. It is a travesty. 

Roy lifts his right hand and snaps his fingers. Jets of flame arc through the cavernous room with incredible precision, skirting around Edward, Scar, and the chimera, targeting their enemies. The flames engulf the creatures, incinerating them. The roar of the flames doesn’t mask the howls and cries of the creatures as they char and die where they stand. Riza ducks her head, throwing an arm up to shield her face from the heat of the flames. The fire raging around her, the bodies writhing in the flames--

_ They aren’t human,  _ she reminds herself, over and over again.  _ They aren’t human. They’re the enemy.  _

It is like she is in Ishval all over again, watching from her sniper tower, horrified, helpless, as the Flame Alchemist engages in his bloody work. 

When the flames finally burn out, the creatures crumble into piles of ash. The room is empty, save for the six of them. Edward gapes at the ash streaking the floor. Then he turns to face the Colonel. His golden eyes are wide, and his lips tremble. 

“They were the enemy,” Roy replies coolly. “It had to be done.” 

Anger bleeds into Edward’s face, replacing the shock. He starts to say something, but then there is an immense crash from above them, and the clash and shriek of metal giving way. A chunk of the ceiling collapses, dozens of fragments of metal piping plummeting to the ground. To Riza’s alarm, a small, pink-glad girl falls as well, landing on the stone ledge atop the entrance to the tunnel and crying out in pain.

“Is that Mei?” One of the chimeras growls.

The girl, Mei, hadn’t been the only person to make it down. A young man with long, spiky hair stands at the entrance to the tunnel, pulling himself up into a standing position. He coughs hard, swiping at the air around him in a vain attempt to clear the smoke and dust.

“Envy?” Edward bursts out, and Riza looks at him sharply. Envy - one of the three homunculi she hasn’t encountered before. 

Envy regards them with disgust. “Not you guys!” 

Mei slides down from the rock ledge. To Riza’s surprise, she runs straight for Scar. The young girl positions herself in front of him in a battle stance, as if ready to defend him. “You fool!” Scar barks at her. “Why didn’t you go back to Xing?”

Mei sniffles. “I just wanted to help.” 

Scar actually looks alarmed by her tears, and Riza represses her bitterness. Where was this compassion for Nina Tucker? Nina didn’t have to meet the end that she did. The end that Scar chose for her. “Forget it,” he says gruffly. “Don’t cry.” 

Envy rolls his eyes. “Typical whiny humans.” His voice rubs Riza’s nerves raw. It is just as cold as Lust’s, but even less human, somehow. “You guys make me sick. And you made a serious mess down here.” He surveys them, his gaze cold and reptilian. “The Fullmetal Alchemist, the Flame Alchemist, and Scar. And you filthy chimera, too. Who gets the pleasure of being the first to die?”

_ You,  _ Riza wants to say. She bites the response back. Her Colonel stares at the homunculus through narrowed eyes. “So you’re Envy. You’re the homunculus who can change his appearance at will.”

“Oh, so you’ve heard of me?” Envy gives them a twisted grin. “I’m flattered. Nice to meet you, Colonel.” He gasps in mock, exaggerated surprise, turning between the Colonel and Scar. “Hold on. You’re teaming up with him? You do know that he turned Ishval into hell on Earth, right?”

Riza stiffens, but Scar doesn’t turn from Envy. “I’m aware of that,” he replies tonelessly.

“What?” Envy makes a show of bafflement, his jaw dropping. “You’re friends now? You guys are no fun at all. What happened to trying to crush each other’s windpipes? Look at the two of you! You obviously want to kill each other, so why don’t you just go ahead?”

Riza’s hackles rise at Envy’s transparent attempt to bait them. Scar still remains motionless, glaring only at Envy, not at her or Roy. Her Colonel sighs, and she knows that sigh very well; she knows how hard he is working to restrain his temper. “We’re not going to be pawns in your sick little game anymore,” Roy says, through gritted teeth.

“Really?” Envy sneers. “And what about  _ your _ sick games? Don’t kid yourself, Mustang. You know that humans love to watch other people suffer, while making fools of themselves.” He tilts his head to the side, and actually giggles. “I mean, why else would you constantly be at war with one another?”

To Riza’s surprise, Roy smirks. There is no humor in it. “There really is nothing like watching fools dig their own graves. Especially when that fool is an arrogant homunculus who’s too stupid to see what he’s doing.”

A growl emanates from Envy’s throat. It’s almost dog-like, except Riza has never seen a dog so malicious. “I’ve humored you long enough,” Roy snaps. “Answer a question of mine. I want you to tell me who killed Maes Hughes, and I want the truth.” 

“Maria Ross did.” Envy shrugs, the picture of nonchalance. “Isn’t that why you burned her to death?” 

“Shut up,” Roy orders. A tremor of rage passes over his features. “I know that she didn’t kill him.”

Envy bursts out laughing. “You mean to tell me that you scorched an innocent girl to a pile of ashes? Nicely done, you monster! It must have been fun to tell her family - did you cry when you told them? Or were you too broken to even do that?”

Riza’s stomach turns. He is just as cruel as Lust had been. 

“For the love of God, shut up, you idiot. Just tell me what I want to know, or I’ll burn the truth out of you, you worthless scum.” There is such dark menace in Roy’s voice that Riza looks at him askance. “Tell me who’s responsible for Hughes’ murder.” 

A taut silence stretches over them. Riza notices that Mei and the chimera, and Edward, have all taken a few steps away from Roy, giving him a wide berth. She understands. The hair on the back of her arms stands up. Every bit of her intuition screams out in foreboding; in warning of impending danger. That is a feeling she is accustomed to, after nine years as a soldier. It is not a feeling that she has ever linked so explicitly to Roy. 

Once again, Envy howls with laughter. He holds his arms wide, as if ready to embrace all of them. “Congratulations, Colonel Mustang. You’ve finally hunted down your culprit.”

Roy makes a soft sound, like he had been struck across the face. Loathing surges through Riza, burning through her veins like wildfire. She aims her gun at Envy, but the homunculus just takes one look at her and Roy and laughs harder.

“You’re saying that you killed Hughes?” Roy’s hands clench into fists. “I doubt a moron like you could pull that off.”

“Moron?” Envy scoffs. “I prefer to use that term for somebody who falls for a cheap trick like this.” Blood-red lightning flashes around him, starting at his feet and crackling upward, hissing and sparking. Riza stares, transfixed, as Envy transforms into Gracia Hughes. The resemblance is flawless, but Gracia would never grin in the callous way that Envy is doing now. 

Edward goes pale with disgust. Riza almost takes a step back, and her heart breaks for Hughes, because of course he would have faltered. Of course he would have hesitated to shoot anything wearing Gracia’s visage. She might have hesitated in the same way, if the enemy came to her wearing Roy or Rebecca’s skin. That moment of hesitation might have cost her life, just like it cost Hughes. 

Roy shudders, his expression darkening. Envy’s shoulders shake with deranged glee. “You should see your face!” he crows. “You’re not going to believe this, but that was the same look on Hughes’ face when I shot him! The utter shock, the confusion, as he watched his own wife shoot him! It was great!”

Riza can’t bear to look at Envy. Gracia. She lowers her gun and averts her eyes, her insides roiling with revulsion and horror and pain. 

“That’s enough!” 

Riza barely recognizes Roy’s voice. She opens her eyes, forcing back her nausea. Her Colonel is livid with fury. He stares at Envy like a wolf preparing to lunge at his prey and tear its throat out with his teeth. “Everything you’ve said is fuel on your funeral pyre.” He pronounces the words slowly, deliberately. “I think I’ll start with burning out your tongue.” 

Roy steps forward, in front of them. “Stand down, all of you. I’m dealing with this one on my own.” His posture is tense, coiled, ready to strike. “This one is mine, and mine alone.” 

Riza can sense that the situation has spiraled out of control. She can feel it in the air, as tangible as a change in temperature. Before she can refuse, one of the chimeras speaks up, looking at Edward and Scar. “You heard him. Let’s keep moving so that we can find Father.”

Envy’s arm shoots out, fast as a whip. It looks nothing like the human arm he bore a minute ago. It is a dozen feet long and thickly muscled, a mottled shade of dark green. “I don’t remember giving you permission to leave,” Envy interrupts. “I still owe you some pain and misery for what you did.”

Roy snaps his fingers. A jet of flame flies across the room with deadly precision, enveloping Envy with such force that he is knocked against the wall. He collapses, still wearing Gracia’s form. It is a terrible thing to see her eyes vacant, mouth hanging open, as she moans in pain. “Keep your eyes on me, Envy,” he says coldly. “Our conversation is the only one that should concern you.”

Red lightning sparks around Gracia’s form. As Envy stands, he reverts to the body that Riza recognizes as his, with the spiky black hair and pointed chin. He’s groaning, his hands braced on his knees, incapable of forming words. Roy smiles. “It’s interesting how quickly the tongue can be rendered into bubbling grease,” he observes, as detached as a scientist in an anatomy lab. Riza is struck by the memory of Dr. Knox’s words about he experimented on the Ishvalans that Roy burned to death. “It’s surprising how easily it burns, isn’t it?” 

“Lieutenant?” Edward asks, his attention not wavering from Envy. “Do you really think the two of you can--”

“Edward,” Riza interrupts, training her gun on the homunculus. A wounded opponent can be the most deadly, as it desperately lashes out in a last attempt to save itself. “Just go. We can handle this one.” 

“Are you sure?” Edward presses.

“The Lieutenant said  _ go,  _ Elric.”

Roy never calls Edward that. It’s always been  _ Fullmetal.  _ Her Colonel’s jaw is set, and a muscle twitches there. “You’ve got more important matters to deal with.”

One of the chimeras approaches Edward, placing a firm hand on his head and guiding him toward the passageway. “He’s right, Ed. Let’s go.” 

“Hold on!” Edward protests, looking back at her, but they don’t allow him to stop. Scar and Mei follow, bringing up the rear. 

Envy glowers at Edward and Mei as they pass. Red light still sparks around his body. “Damn it,” he mutters, dragging himself to his feet, facing them down. “You’ve been rather dogged in your pursuit of Hughes’ killer, Mustang. You’re a true friend, to the very end.”

Riza watches, her fingers going numb around her weapon, as Envy convulses, muscles rippling, head thrown back to the ceiling in a ghastly screech. His arms shoot out to the sides, doubling, then tripling, in length. The abnormally long arms twist at impossible angles, his fingernails sharpening into claws. His back arches grotesquely, his entire body lolling to the right. With another scream, he transforms into a beast even more massive and inhuman than Gluttony. Envy is as tall as a two-story building, and his form is almost dog-like, with the same long black hair that marked his human appearance. 

Primal fear courses through her. Homunculus or not, a creature of his size wouldn’t even feel her bullets. Her only hope is to put a few in each eye, and hope that buys her Colonel some time before the red lightning repairs the wounded eyes.

“Keep your distance, Lieutenant!” Roy throws an arm out, preventing her from getting closer to Envy. 

Envy bellows at them, a sound that makes Riza’s knees go weak. Dozens upon dozens of human faces bulge and ripple out of the flesh of his neck and shoulders. Each of the faces is trapped in a rictus of horror, and they add their own screams and cries to Envy’s. The homunculus plants his paw-like legs in front of them, blocking the passageway. He grins down at them, teeth bared savagely. 

To Riza’s surprise, Envy speaks. His voice is distorted, warped, by his transformation. “Out of respect for your tireless quest for vengeance, I’ll give you the fight you’re looking for. I’m not exactly capable of treading lightly in this body, so you better give it all--”

Roy snaps his fingers, and Envy’s eyes ignite in his skull. Riza almost chokes at the stench. The homunculus howls in agony, staggering back, collapsing to the floor. 

“What’s it like, having the fluid inside of your eyes boil?” Roy asks, almost conversationally. “I would imagine that it might sting a little.”

Envy shakes his head like a dog, one massive paw covering his head. “Damn you!”

Roy snaps again. The fire he creates is a dozen times larger this time, large enough to consume Envy’s enormous form. He screams and writhes on the floor, and all the humans imprisoned within his body cry out with him. It is an awful cacophony of pain, but Roy just stares Envy down, unperturbed. “It was stupid of you to give me a bigger target. Did you think size would increase your chance of winning?”

Envy whimpers and groans, red lightning sparking around him. It doesn’t seem to have much of an effect. The display of weakness only seems to enrage Roy more. “Stand up, monster!” he commands. “Go ahead and regenerate yourself - you’ll suffer a thousand deaths before I’m done with you.” 

Envy regards both of them, not smug and triumphant, secure in his assumption of his own victory, as he had been a matter of moments ago. There is a hint of fear in his one regenerated eye. He strikes out in one sudden movement, lashing his tail against the wall. The impact shatters the concrete, sending smoke and dust flying, completely obscuring Riza’s vision. She can only hear the crackle of lightning, and then the rapid cadence of light, human footfalls moving in the direction of the passageway Edward and the others disappeared into. 

“You coward!” Roy roars, dashing off in pursuit of the homunculus, heedless of the clouds of smoke that still billow through the room.

“Colonel!” Riza shouts, getting ready to follow him.

“You wait here, Lieutenant!” Roy spares her one brief look before he runs headlong into the dark passageway. “I’m going to take care of him myself!”

He’s gone within a matter of moments, before she can even advance to the doorway. Riza steps toward it. Dread settles over her like a cloak as she peers into the all-consuming darkness beyond. The dark - it is Pride’s domain. She is vulnerable to him there. Envy lurks within, as well, with his ability to shapeshift and his repulsive, nightmarish true form. 

Mrs. Bradley’s words from the night before echo in her mind.  _ You’re making a mistake. He is going to lead you to your doom.  _

Riza’s palms are cold. Her intuition tells her, without a shadow of a doubt, that the First Lady had been right. Her doom lies within these tunnels.

But her Colonel is there. Roy is there. Envy is out for his blood, and likely Pride too. 

Riza takes the safety off her gun and cocks it. “Colonel, I’m sorry, but I can’t wait,” she whispers.

She follows Roy into the dark.

The stretch of pitch black lasts for approximately a tenth of a mile. Riza hears her heart pounding. She wills herself not to be distracted by the sound. Finally, to her tremendous relief, she emerges into a large and dimly lit room. The walls are covered with an intricate system of exposed metal pipes. 

Riza walks as soundlessly as she can, her gun held at the ready. She is grateful for all the time she has spent training and in the field, honing her senses and reflexes. Envy won’t be able to take her by surprise. 

No. There is only one way that Envy can threaten her and Roy now, and that is by using his filthy little trick. Riza inhales and exhales shallowly, preparing herself. She follows the large room into another tunnel system. This one seems more sophisticated than some of the others she has seen underneath Central over the past several months. The walls are lined with brown brick, and it is concrete underneath her boots, not tightly packed dirt. 

Riza stops, and takes an instant to check in with herself. Her ability to sense a homunculus’s presence has never failed her. Still, her tension and anxiety muddies the waters, and it is an effort for her to clear her mind.

Her patience pays off. Her awareness of Envy’s presence nearby registers as a prickling at the back of her neck, the fine hairs there standing up. 

Riza moves instantaneously, ducking into a side hallway that derails off the main one. She crouches to the floor, her pistol ready. 

She recognizes the sound of the approaching footsteps. Military-issue boots. She recognizes the cadence of those steps, and the weight behind each footfall. (Five foot eight, one hundred and fifty pounds.) Emotion swells inside her, something dark and ugly.  _ That’s what you want to do, Envy? You think you can use him against me? _

Envy is three steps away from her, now. Two. One. 

Riza knows what is ahead. She still isn’t quite prepared for the shock of seeing Roy looming above her, fingers poised to snap. She doesn’t falter, aiming her gun up and at his chest. 

He lowers his hand. Takes a step back. Riza lowers her gun, wondering what the homunculus is playing at. 

“I told you to stay behind, Lieutenant.”

Riza doubts herself, for a split second. It sounds just like her Colonel. Perfectly like her Roy. But she’d heard Envy speak in Gracia’s voice earlier. It was a flawless impersonation.

“I’m sorry, but I couldn’t just sit there, sir.” Riza stands, keeping a subtle eye on Roy. Envy. 

He shoves his hands into his pockets. It’s such an uncanny imitation of Roy’s mannerisms that it makes her skin crawl. 

“Where’s Envy?” she asks, testing him, trying to see how he’s going to play this. 

“He outran me. This place is like a labyrinth.” Roy - Envy - turns toward her. “Well, you might as well help me kill him, now that you’re here. Stay right by my side, Lieutenant.”

He proceeds down the hallway. That, more than anything else, confirms that her instinct had been correct. Roy would never have responded to her like that. He would have snapped at her; chastised her for disobeying an order meant to keep her safe. 

Riza follows, walking at a measured, even pace behind him, not wanting to arouse his suspicion yet. Then she levels her gun and points it directly at his head. Even though she knows this isn’t Roy, that this is Envy, the gesture is repulsive and  _ wrong.  _

Envy stops dead. He glares at her over his shoulder. Then he lifts his hands to either side of his head, still performing his best impression of what her Colonel would do in such a situation. “What are you doing, Lieutenant? Do you know who you’re pointing that gun at?”

Perhaps this is a reckless maneuver. It is completely unlike her to toy with an opponent like this. Still, the way Envy baited Roy back in the laboratory rubbed her the wrong way. Envy has always relished playing these evil games with his victims.  _ Let’s see how you like it, when someone plays games with you _ .

“Don’t make me laugh,” Riza says dismissively. “When it’s just the two of us, the Colonel calls me Riza.” 

(A lie, of course. Even with the new intimacies they have explored lately, Roy has called her by her first name twice in the past seven years.)

Riza relishes the way Envy stiffens, like he had been dealt a glancing blow. He leaps away from her with astonishing speed, shedding the facade of her Colonel, transforming back into his own form. “I didn’t know you two were that close,” he jeers. 

“I lied.” 

Riza squeezes the trigger. Her gunshot catches Envy right underneath the chin. It sends him flying head over heels, toppling to the ground. Even though the shot won’t be fatal, it’s still satisfying to see him take the hit. She smirks, and a seed of optimism blooms inside her. She is carrying more guns than she had when she faced Lust - three handguns and her rifle. Roy had weakened Envy with his attacks. Maybe she  _ can  _ finish him off. “It’s still nice of you to fall for it, Envy. Now you can do me the favor of dying.” 

Envy tries to pull himself to his feet, glowering at her. Riza doesn’t allow him to stand. She fires shot after shot into center mass. Each bullet hits, sending blood spurting from Envy’s wounds. She tosses her empty gun aside and draws both of her spare handguns, shooting with perfect accuracy. The shots hit him in the chest, the head, the neck. Envy staggers backward, unable to keep his footing. There is a jolt of triumph at seeing that his red lightning can’t spark fast enough to restore his injuries. 

Envy cries out in pain. Before Riza can do so much as blink, his arm extends, shooting toward her so rapidly that she barely manages to dodge the strike. His claws slice the shoulder strap of her rifle, and her shoulder with it. She catches the rifle in one deft motion before it can fall to the floor, aiming it toward Envy. Her shot catches him right in the kneecap, hobbling his ability to stand and advance toward her. Three shots hit in the stomach. 

Envy doubles over. The arm that he braces against the ground is green, a warning sign of an impending transformation. Riza glances up at the ceiling nervously. It isn’t high enough to accommodate his body. If he transforms, he’ll shatter the ceiling and crush her underneath the rubble. This is very bad. 

But something works in her favor. The weight of Envy’s leg crushes the floor underneath him, immobilizing his right paw. Riza takes aim again, wanting to take advantage of his momentary weakness. Envy reacts immediately, transforming the muscled right arm to a thin, agile tendril. It rockets toward her, and this time, Riza can’t dodge it. Envy curls it around her, crushing her in a vice-like grip, driving the breath from her body. He lifts her off the floor and slams her into the ground with shocking speed and shattering impact. It stuns her, black spots exploding into her vision. Riza gasps, hearing and feeling something  _ crack  _ underneath her. It had been her hair clip, a few vertebra in her back, and maybe a rib. 

Envy howls in demented laughter. “I’m going to dump you at your Colonel’s feet like a rag!”

Riza turns with difficulty, struggling in vain against Envy’s grip. She moves just in time to see a torrent of flame devour the homunculus. The flames are so intense that the heat sears her face, even at a distance of several meters. The fire doesn’t burn out with its typical speed. It maintains a sustained force, and the roar of the flames is almost deafening. The tendril holding her dissolves, crumbling into ash. 

Riza straightens, pushing herself upright, struggling to catch her breath. “Colonel!” she manages to call out. She can’t see Roy, but she knows that he must be somewhere nearby. 

The flames finally subside. Envy is barely standing, his flesh singed and blackened, panting like a dog. Then he is immolated again. He crumbles facedown to the ground, twitching and jerking uncontrollably. Roy’s footsteps echo down one of the side passageways. Envy must be able to see him better, at his angle. He stares down the passageway in blank terror, unable to force himself upright. 

Her Colonel emerges from the darkness. Riza has never seen him so incensed, so fearsome, not even when he confronted Lust several months ago. “What the hell are you doing to my Lieutenant?” His voice is low and strained and it fills her with an unspeakable disquietude. He stares at Envy, murder in his eyes. Then his gaze flickers to her, pinning her to the spot. “Don’t interfere, Lieutenant. I told you I would take care of him myself.”

It’s frightening to see Roy like this. She doesn’t even recognize him. Riza grips her injured shoulder, unable to find a reply. Envy cringes back from her Colonel. “You damn human,” he hisses. “Don’t you--”

Roy snaps his fingers, burning Envy again and again. The homunculus’s speech devolves into incoherent, tormented, drawn-out screams. Riza can see him writhing and convulsing in the flames. His human form begins to burn away. Her Colonel snaps over and over again, lashing out with one vicious, ruthless attack after another, snarling his rage like a dog gone rabid. 

He’s been driven over the edge. The edge that he’s been stepping closer and closer to ever since Hughes’ murder. Riza can’t look at him. She can’t look away. Part of her wants to curl up and cry. She’s unable to reconcile the man before her, this man who makes her blood run cold, this embodiment of wrath, with the Colonel that she has supported and followed and loved for all of these years.  _ Who are you? This isn’t my Colonel. This isn’t my Roy.  _

One last explosion rocks the passageway. Envy is bent backwards, his body a shell of itself. He begins to crumble into ash, and Riza knows a moment of relief that the horror is over.

Then there is a strange, child-like whimpering. Riza watches in disbelief as a small creature crawls free of Envy’s form. The human body withers away, leaving just the little green creature, the size of a newborn kitten. It sobs and whimpers, dragging itself down the hallway. 

Roy takes one smooth step forward, pinning Envy beneath his boot, on the verge of crushing him. “So this is your true form, then?” he asks. None of the menace, none of the rage, had been alleviated by defeating the homunculus, reducing it to helplessness on the floor beneath him. 

He steps down harder. Envy’s pitiful little cry cuts Riza to the core. The defenseless creature flails beneath Roy’s boot. “Please don’t! No, don’t! I don’t want to die!” 

She can see that her Colonel remains unrelenting. That he isn’t going to waver from his path. Riza stands. She takes one step forward. Then another. Roy doesn’t even look at her. 

Part of her demands that she stop. That she allow Roy to follow this fit of deadly rage to its natural conclusion; to kill Envy, just as he killed Lust. Envy is a homunculus, after all. He murdered an innocent Ishvalan child. He started the war in Ishval. He murdered Maes Hughes. He would have murdered her. Envy deserves to die. 

No. 

She made Mother a promise, months ago, when she visited her grave in Cecil.  _ I won’t become cruel or hard, like this world we live in. We might be fighting monsters, but I will not become one. _

There is a humane way to deal with one’s enemies. Many would disagree with her saying so, but there is a humane way to execute them. This is not it.

She told the First Lady the same, mere hours before.  _ I could never accept such cruel behavior from my partner. From my commanding officer. From anyone I choose to follow. _

She won’t compromise her principles. Not even for her Colonel. Not even for the man she loves. 

Roy raises his hand, prepared to strike. “I’m not giving you a choice. Burn in hell, you little--”

Riza puts her gun to his head. 

Roy freezes. He doesn’t lower his hand. “What do you think you’re doing?”

The question is quietly spoken, but his tone is profoundly unsettling. Roy isn’t talking to her like she’s his Lieutenant, or even his friend, his Riza. He speaks to her as he would an enemy. 

“That’s enough, Colonel,” Riza commands. It takes every bit of her self-control to keep herself steady. “I’ll deal with him from here.”

Roy’s hand drops one inch. His shoulders remain hunched, tense, ready to attack. “He’s as good as finished. Lower your weapon.”

“I can’t obey that.” Despite Riza’s best efforts to remain calm, some of her fear and anger creeps into her voice. “Put your hand down.”

Roy raises it instead, as if to strike, lightning sparking at his fingers. “Damn it!” he yells, with such tremendous fury in his voice. He has never yelled at her like that before. No one has, since Father. “I won’t ask again!”

In that moment, Riza’s first reaction isn’t that of a soldier. It is the reaction of a petrified little girl. 

She’s afraid of him. Afraid that he’s going to hurt her. 

Something breaks inside her. 

The ground underneath the Colonel erupts, jolting him to the side, making him stagger and lose his grip on Envy. Riza lifts her head, numb, only to see Edward and Scar standing a short distance away. Edward grabs Envy, glaring at Roy without saying a word. 

Roy recovers quickly, turning his back on her. He stretches his gloved hand toward Edward. “Fullmetal,” he says. “I’ll take that.”

Edward hesitates, looking from Roy to her - and her gun, pointed at the Colonel - and then down at Envy.

“That is an order.” Roy takes one step toward Edward, his hand still outstretched. “Give it to me right now.”

Edward makes up his mind in a split second. He stands up straighter. “No, I won’t.” 

Lightning crackles between Roy’s fingers again. When he speaks, he seems to be making an effort to control himself. “That thing deserves the worst death possible.”

Edward holds firm. “No.”

“Give him to me!” Roy shouts, completely losing what remains of his self-control. “Or I’ll burn your hand along with him!” 

He threatened Edward.  _ He threatened Edward.  _

Inside her, there is only screaming. The little girl and the woman both huddle together, hands pressed over their ears, eyes shut tight. _No._ She doesn’t want to hear this. She doesn’t want to see this. Her Roy couldn’t do this. Her Colonel couldn’t do this. Threaten her, and threaten Edward--

Riza’s finger tightens on the trigger. She almost presses down. If Roy moves one more muscle--

“Try it, then!” Edward challenges, refusing to back down. “If it’s a fight you want, fine! But maybe you should take a good look at yourself first! Is this the kind of leader you want to be, Colonel? Another monster?”

Roy trembles. His shoulders shake. He doesn’t capitulate.

“Are you becoming someone no better than an animal?” Scar asks impassively, crossing his arms over his chest. “Giving in to your anger? You can if you want to. I won’t stop you from giving in to revenge.”

Edward whirls on him. “Hey!”

“What right do I have, to stop someone from taking vengeance?” Scar continues. “But still… I dread thinking about what kind of world a man held captive by his own hate could create, once he becomes its ruler.”

Those words, more than any other so far, have a visible impact on him. Roy flinches.

Riza steels herself, preparing to say her piece. “Colonel, I can’t let you kill him. With that being said, I have no intention of letting him live. I’ll dispose of him.”

Roy extinguishes the lightning. “But I did it,” he insists. The words are almost a plea. “I finally found him.”

“I know that! But still--” 

Her hands are shaking. Her hands haven’t trembled while gripping a gun since Ishval. She hadn’t taken a stand in Ishval, like she could have. She had been seventeen and too afraid to make a stand for her morals and principles. She has felt the consequences of her cowardice for the past nine years. Hundreds of Ishvalans paid the consequences for her refusal to stand up for what was right. 

She isn’t that girl anymore. 

“But still, you’re about to do something reckless.” Riza can’t stop her hands from shaking, but her words are fierce. “This will not help. Not your country, or your friends. This is pure hatred, and I will not let it take you. I know you’re better than that.” 

She almost sobs at the memories that threaten to overwhelm her. Of her Colonel at his best and brightest, over the thousands of days they have spent working alongside one another at East City Command and Central Command. Of Roy at his most kind and gentle, over countless moments when they have been alone together. Of the way he has always been principled and courageous and caring, devoted to doing what is right, and protecting the people around him. 

The Colonel looks up at the ceiling. “If you’re going to shoot me, then go ahead and do it,” he says wearily. “But after you’ve done that, Lieutenant, what will you do?”

He could have slapped her, and it would have hurt less. 

Riza hasn’t felt exhaustion and pain like this since Ishval. It seeps down to her bones, drowning her in it. 

She’ll shoot him, if she has to. If he threatens Edward again. She promised long ago, to shoot him if he ever deviated from his path. At the time, the Colonel had been nothing more to her than an old friend, a first crush, a man she once trusted and adored.

Now, Roy is so much more to her than that. She is devoted to him and to the future, to the new Amestris, they would build together. She loves him with everything she has, every fiber of her being. She has dreamed (an impossible dream she could never, will never, speak out loud) of marrying him. Of spending every day and night by his side. Of raising children together.

She will shoot the man she loves, if she has to. She will press her finger down on the trigger and watch the bullet go through his skull, and splatter the walls with his blood. 

Riza knows, with absolute certainty, that she won’t be able to survive that. She has survived a great deal in her twenty-six years, but killing the only man she has ever loved will kill her.

“I have no intention of carrying on by myself,” she confesses. “This fight will be my last.”

Roy shudders at her words, and goes very still. Finally, he snaps his fingers, throwing a ball of flame down the side passageway, igniting an explosion. His arms fall, limp, to his sides. “That can’t happen.” His words are nearly a whisper. “I can’t... I can’t afford to lose you.”

This time, when the Colonel lifts his hand, it is to rub at his eyes. “What kind of madness is this?” he asks, as if to himself. “Scolded by a child. Lectured by a man who has been my enemy. And you…” 

Roy looks over his shoulder at her. Riza tenses, reflexively flashing back to the way they had confronted one another before Edward’s arrival. 

The Colonel turns to face her fully. The fury has drained from his expression, leaving nothing but a sorrow too deep for words. “I’ve done it again. I’ve hurt you. How foolish can one man be?”

Roy steps toward her. Riza doesn’t lower her gun. She sees Roy as he is now; beside him, she also sees the Roy who had terrified her so deeply. She watches him peel off his gloves, disarming himself. Then he places a gentle hand on hers, skin touching skin, and lowers the gun for her. He doesn’t release her hand, but he can’t seem to look at her. He’s practically shrinking into himself with shame. “Please forgive me,” he says, his voice barely audible. 

Roy sinks to his knees at her feet. He looks up at her then, and Riza crumbles to her knees. They stare at one another for a long moment. Tears well up in her eyes, and she blinks them away. If she starts crying now, she won’t be able to stop. Spots of blackness edge into her vision. Her nerves feel rubbed raw.  _ She  _ feels rubbed raw and exposed and she hurts, body and mind and soul. 

Normally, when she hurts, her instinct is to want Roy for comfort. To want his arms around her, holding her close, making her feel protected and safe. To rest her face against his shoulder and breathe him in. 

But Roy was the one who made her hurt. Who betrayed her trust. 

She can still hear him yelling at her -  _ damn it, I won’t ask again -  _ and see the lightning sparking across his fingers and--

It feels like having no home. No safe place left to turn. 

Riza can recognize the warning signs of an impending panic attack. She plants her palms against the ground, steadying herself. 

It is Envy’s voice that distracts her. “Is that all it takes?” the creature rasps, and Riza looks up at it. “Some flowery words, some feigned empathy? You make me sick to my stomach. Are you humans always such pathetic worms?”

Roy turns to Envy. Riza braces herself for him to shout again, for him to stand up and stride toward Envy, ready to crush his tiny body in his bare hands. But he doesn’t react at all to the homunculus’s tirade. Envy’s words wash over her, but Riza is too depleted to react. 

Edward is the only one who speaks. “Now I see,” he murmurs. “You’re jealous of humans, aren’t you?”

The question isn’t a taunting one. Edward sounds like he’s actually empathizing with the little homunculus. “We humans, according to you, were supposed to be nothing, compared to homunculi,” he observes. “And yet, when we’re beaten down, when we stray and fall, we keep facing our challenges, again and again. Our loved ones are always there to pick us back up. And you’re jealous of that.”

Riza closes her eyes for a moment, painfully aware of the Colonel’s proximity.  _ When we stray and fall, we keep facing our challenges. Our loved ones are always there to pick us back up.  _

Roy strayed. Roy fell. He turned back before he crossed the point of no return. Before he struck at her or Edward. 

_ Our loved ones are always there to pick us back up.  _

He scared her. For a few awful minutes, she had been more afraid of Roy than she has been of anyone. Even Father. She had been terrified of Father’s displeasure and anger, growing up, but that fear was of his disapproval, of his raised voice, of his sharp words. She had never feared him striking her, or using his alchemy to hurt her.

(Never feared it,  _ consciously.  _ Ever since Ishval, Riza has had countless nightmares of Father using his Flame Alchemy against her -  _ you stupid girl  _ \- punishing her for sharing the secret of Flame Alchemy with Roy. In her nightmares, Father stares at her coldly and snaps his fingers like Roy and sets her alight, unmoved by her screams.  _ Suffer, like the Ishvalans suffered. _ ) 

But Roy has always been there for her, when she has been brought low by grief and despair. He has always been there to offer her his unconditional support. To help her back up, and help her move forward.

Doesn’t she owe the same thing to him?

Riza looks at him.  _ If I were the one who strayed from my path, who lost control, would he forgive me? Would he give me a second chance? _

She knows the answer to that. 

Edward’s cry of pain jolts Riza out of her reverie. She draws her weapon on the homunculus, now wriggling at Edward’s feet, out of reflex, but Edward doesn’t appear to be seriously injured. 

“Wait.”

The merciful word, coming from the Colonel, takes her by surprise. “He won’t last long,” Scar agrees.

Riza lowers her gun. They watch in silence as Envy dies. 

“He took the coward’s way out,” Roy mumbles, burying his face in his hands. Riza says nothing. 

Scar is the next to speak, after a long pause. “Come on. We’ve lost valuable time.” 

Edward swipes his sleeve over his eyes, drying them. “Right.” He pauses. “Lieutenant Hawkeye?”

She doesn’t need Edward worrying about her. He has enough to be concerned with. Riza inclines her head in acknowledgement. “Go ahead. I’ll be right there.”

Scar and Edward proceed down the hallway, Edward with clear reluctance. 

“Lieutenant.” The single word is so loaded with regret. “Are you all right?”

Her reply comes automatically, mechanically. “I’m fine, sir.”

Roy clearly wants to press further, but he glances at Edward and Scar, ahead of them, and sighs. He stands, and holds a hand out to her. 

Riza doesn’t take it. She doesn’t look at him. She stands, alone, and follows Edward and Scar down the passageway. 

* * *

_to be continued_

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you so much to everybody who left comments and kudos on the previous chapter. Reading them makes me so happy. I feel very touched and moved by how responsive readers have been to this story. I am so grateful. 
> 
> This chapter was so painful and upsetting to write that I can't say much about it in these notes. Riza's reaction to Roy and the way he triggered memories of her past emotional abuse broke my heart, especially in light of the interlude content. 
> 
> Thank you to @Flight_at_Midnight and @thatisadamnfinecupofcoffee for inspiring a couple of scenes in this chapter - Riza's conversation with Mrs. Bradley, and the graveyard scene with Roy. Both of those scenes ended up being a lot of fun to write, so I'm grateful for the inspiration. Thanks, also, to Kira for helping me work through where I should end this chapter, and providing emotional support while I was writing it. :') 
> 
> Random note: "Power is Power" by The Weeknd, SZA, and Travis Scott, has long been my inspiration track for the dark Roy we see at his worst in this chapter. 
> 
> Fun note: My 28th birthday is this Thursday!! I wanted to get the interlude & chapter out before then, so I'm glad I managed that. 
> 
> I would love to hear what you thought about this chapter. Comments are so appreciated.
> 
> Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it! I am also on tumblr @lantur if you would like to connect. I hope you all have a healthy and safe week ahead.


	17. fifteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Important note: Excerpts of the dialogue and events in this chapter are taken from the manga and Brotherhood; they are not original content.

For the first time in her life, Riza walks ahead of the Colonel. Not a half-step, or one, or two behind, to watch his back. Not at his side. Three steps ahead of him.

It contradicts her most deeply held instinct as a bodyguard to protect her charge at all times. Part of her berates herself for this pettiness; this immaturity. _Fall back so that you can watch out for him as you should._

Riza can’t bring herself to obey the order. She keeps walking, her chest tight with misery, even as she strives to put what happened out of her mind. She needs to devote her complete focus to the mission. _Bury it,_ she tells herself. _It_ is the pain and hurt and anger within her, clawing at her insides, desperate to be unleashed. _Bury it, just like you’ve buried so much else. Bury it, so you can do your job as a bodyguard and a soldier. So that you can be of use to the people around you._

She can’t, yet. Riza shies away from the thought of walking beside Roy, or watching his back - having him within her line of sight at all. She may have quelled the bleeding (for now), but the cut, messy and deep, hasn’t even begun to scab over yet. 

She can be a soldier, no matter what strain she is under. She can be brave, and stoic, no matter what. But looking at Roy will make that a hundred times more difficult. 

So Riza remains three steps ahead of the Colonel. She justifies this by thinking that she is close enough that she will still be able to immediately act in response to any sudden threat to him. Greater distance would be preferable, though impossible. The guilt and shame and pain that radiates off him is almost a tangible thing. 

The realization nearly makes her steps falter. The realization of, _I wish we hadn’t kissed. I wish that over the past year - starting with that cursed day where we learned what happened to Nina Tucker - we hadn’t blurred the lines between us until they finally ceased to exist. I wish we had kept the same friendship that we shared for six years._

This is exactly what she had been so afraid of. That having a more intimate relationship with the Colonel would complicate her role as his Lieutenant and his moral compass. The previous winter, in her apartment, Roy accused her of their closeness biasing her judgment in his favor. Riza argued that she had never allowed, and would never allow, any personal attachment to compromise the agreement they made when she joined the unit. That she would always give him an honest assessment of his behavior and actions, and respond accordingly.

She had. She hadn’t allowed her love for the Colonel to hold her back from what she did just a short while ago. She hadn’t allowed it to hold her back from pointing a gun at his head and being ready, truly and completely, to pull the trigger if she had to. If he hadn’t backed down, she would have killed him. ( _Just like you’ve killed so many others. More blood on your hands._ ) 

It had nearly broken her. Even the way Roy reacted to her in the moments before may not have left her so profoundly shaken if they hadn’t shared that kiss in his car less than twelve hours ago. If he hadn’t interlaced his fingers with hers and told her, _I wouldn’t be able to move forward, if I lost you._ If she didn’t have so many memories clouding her mind of Roy holding her in his arms to comfort her. His savagery wouldn’t have been so shocking if not for the juxtaposition with the gentleness he has shown her.

Riza reaches up and pushes a stray strand of hair behind her ear. She wishes she had thought to tuck an extra hair clip into one of her pockets. Her hand trembles slightly, and she curls it into a fist, stilling it. 

It would be easy to dismiss all of it as a mistake. Every embrace, every moment of not-quite-platonic tenderness. The kiss she pressed against Roy’s cheek after he healed her injuries. Waking up the following morning with his coat wrapped around her (and it only registers now, months later, that Roy must have carried her to bed that night.) The kiss on the forehead he gave her, some weeks later, after she bared her secrets to him. 

She can’t, though. She can’t dismiss it all with that much ease. Even after what happened, even after the way the Colonel had behaved, after he gouged open old wounds and old fears and traumas, she can’t excise her love for him. Seven years of love does not burn away so easily. Riza knows that with quiet, frustrating certainty. It leaves her with a dull, helpless sense of sorrow. 

She should understand, better than most, the duality that people are capable of carrying within them. By definition, she is a murderer. She has killed hundreds of people in cold blood, extinguishing their lives - every moment they lived, and every hope for the future - with a press of her finger on the trigger. 

Murder, to snuff someone’s life out as quickly and completely as extinguishing a candle, is the ultimate act of cruelty. A memory drifts up from the recesses of her mind, one of the long-suppressed memories from those first few terrible months after Ishval. 

_I feel like an evil person._ A whispered confession, muffled further by the pillow underneath her. _I never thought of myself in that way before. Is this who I really am?_

Bresler’s fingers stroking through her hair, before he leaned down and kissed the top of her head. _No. You don’t have a cruel bone in your body, Hawkeye._

Riza hadn’t quite believed it, at the time. She thought he was just trying to soothe her. 

In the years since, she has developed a slightly more nuanced, though still unflinching, view of herself. She has killed, and not just that - she has committed the sin of killing innocents. People who did absolutely nothing to deserve the death sentence she handed to them. 

She also cares for others, often even more deeply than she cares for herself. The Colonel, Rebecca, Falman, Fuery, Havoc, Breda, Edward, Alphonse, Black Hayate. She loves them. She wants all of them to be happy, healthy, and safe. She would do anything to protect them and ensure their well-being. 

Duality, in practice. 

Riza sees the same duality in Grumman. He is calculating and ambitious, an expert at manipulation, and it is clear where Roy learned how to plot and scheme as he does. Her grandfather is also genuinely caring, with a soft, kind heart that he keeps well hidden. Even Rebecca carries the same duality within her. People dismiss her as shallow, loud, and airheaded. Rebecca can be all of those things. She is also steadfast, loyal, courageous, and incredibly clever. 

(This is one of the things that doesn’t bear examining too closely. Riza skims over these thoughts, pressing at them with the lightest touch, like one would press on a bruise, unable or unwilling to delve deeper. She hasn’t been able to forget how Roy reacted to her confession about Reid and Bresler. How he accused both of them of taking advantage of her. Riza has returned to those words, on occasion, late at night, when she is unable to sleep. She consented, in both situations. She wanted it, in both situations. She had been of legal age. But Roy asserted that it was still taking advantage. 

The thought left her uneasy. _Taking advantage_ implies coercion and unwelcome attention. Neither of them had coerced her into anything. It is hard to associate that with the very much wanted comfort of touch, kisses and closeness, and sweet words. Reid and Bresler had been the first men to hold her and make her feel safe and warm, and good, and wanted and loved. Even if it had taken place under circumstances that even she can acknowledge had been less than savory.)

Duality, in practice, again. 

Even Scar, walking just in front of her now… Riza spent months fearing and loathing him. He killed Nina Tucker. He threatened the Colonel and Edward. He murdered the Rockbells, Winry’s parents, years ago in Ishval. But now, Scar is fighting alongside Edward, and working alongside them to prevent the homunculi from succeeding in their plan. Scar helped talk the Colonel down from his precipice. _I dread thinking about what kind of world a man held captive by his own hate could create, once he becomes its ruler._

It shouldn’t be so difficult, then, to wrap her mind around this. Around the fact that Roy is capable of the same lightness, and the same darkness, as she is. What she did in Ishval, as reprehensible as it was, does not negate the goodness that exists inside her. What Roy did - or almost did - just now does not erase the good inside him, either. His deep, unwavering caring and devotion to the people and principles that matter to him.

Riza understands that, on a logical, rational level. Still, her body feels differently. Every time she does so much as think about Roy, part of her clenches up with remembered fear and shock and pain. _Damn it -_ his raised hand, crackling with lightning, that threatening edge to his voice - _I won’t ask again--_

Riza lifts her head, jolted out of her reverie by Edward’s mutterings. “I don’t understand,” he mumbles, pulling ahead of Scar, searching their surroundings. “I thought it was this way. Or maybe it was that way?” 

Roy quickens his pace a little bit. He looks at her as he passes, and Riza averts her eyes. “Are you lost, Fullmetal?” Roy asks Edward. He sounds almost back to normal. His tone is calm and composed, lacking the menace it carried earlier. 

Edward whirls on the Colonel. “Yeah, well, if I hadn’t come back to keep a certain moron out of trouble, I wouldn’t have gotten so turned around!” 

Roy appears unfazed by the insult. “I don’t recall anyone asking you to come back.” 

“You have got to be kidding!” Edward explodes. “You’d be even further down the road to becoming a complete psycho if me and Scar hadn’t stopped you when we did!”

The words send something bitter rearing up within her. If Edward hadn’t stopped Roy when he did - just after he threatened her, lightning dancing between his fingertips - Roy might have attacked her. 

“Don’t patronize me, please,” Roy replies smoothly. “The Lieutenant had already talked me down by the time you even showed up.”

Riza restrains the uncharacteristic impulse to cut into the conversation. The Colonel’s assertion was far from the truth. Edward’s arrival had stopped the situation from spiraling even more out of control.

“You two should keep quiet,” Scar interrupts. He had fallen into step beside her. “You don’t want the enemy to hear us.”

Roy and Edward assume a rebellious silence. Both of them shove their hands in the pockets of their coats at once, their shoulders slumping at the rebuke. On any other day, Riza would have smiled at their identical postures and responses.

She looks straight ahead now, and takes a deep breath, steeling herself. “Even if the Colonel won’t, I would like to thank you,” she says, her voice barely audible. Riza is conscious that this is the first time she has ever spoken to Scar. She has spent so much time thinking about him. She has simmered with fury at him ( _what did Nina Tucker ever do to you? What did Edward ever do to you?)_ and empathized with him, sometimes in the same moment. “I couldn’t have snapped him out of it by myself.” 

Scar gives her a hard look, and remains implacably silent. Riza continues, nevertheless. “I don’t know if that means anything to you. I’m sure the last thing any Ishvalan wants to hear is that they’ve done a kindness for someone like me. But it was you who brought him back to himself.”

She stops, without meaning to. Scar continues on a few paces before noticing that she is no longer by his side. To Riza’s surprise, he pauses, turning back to her. 

“Thank you,” she repeats, willing him to understand just how deep her gratitude runs.

Scar stiffens, visibly uncomfortable, and turns away. “Your gratitude is unnecessary,” he says gruffly. 

He strides over to join Edward, and Riza sighs. She regrets making him feel ill at ease, truly, but it would have been unkind and ungracious to not acknowledge the role he played. Roy hangs back for a moment, waiting for her to catch up with him. There is no way to avoid it. They walk side-by-side, and at least Scar’s caution to remain quiet provides a convenient excuse for them not to speak to one another. 

After another mile or so, Edward and Scar come to a halt. “We’re getting close,” Scar warns. 

“You can feel it, too?” Edward peers at the arched stone doorway ahead of them. There is only darkness beyond.

Riza paid rapt attention to their surroundings as they proceeded, and her senses are unusually acute, honed by years of training. Still, she hadn’t detected anything amiss. Perhaps Edward is especially attuned to this Father person, just as she is to the homunculi. “Can you sense his presence?” 

“I have a bad feeling.” Edward hunches, as if he’s bracing himself for an attack. “The best way I can explain it is that my old wounds are starting to ache.”

His words leave Riza overly aware of the stiffness in her back that never entirely leaves her. The raised, angry scars that prickle with discomfort whenever the temperature warms past a certain point. 

Edward moves forward, alone, before anyone can stop him. He leads them through the doorway, Roy at his back, Riza behind him, and Scar providing cover to the group from the rear. They emerge into a cavernous stone room, and all four of them freeze momentarily at the sight before them. A small man wearing a doctor’s white coat crouches at the center of the room, and he rises as they enter. 

Riza assesses the situation in an instant. There is another arched doorway behind the strange man. A potential egress point, bringing them up to two confirmed avenues of escape. The ceiling of the room is high and domed. The flow of air suggests a downward draft, meaning there must be another ingress or egress point from the ceiling. 

The doctor is standing amidst a small transmutation circle. He doesn’t appear to be armed. Every one of Riza’s instincts screams out in warning nevertheless. 

“Well, I wasn’t expecting to have an audience.” He smiles, revealing a single gold tooth. “You’re going to give me performance anxiety.” 

Riza raises her rifle, readying herself to shoot. On either side of her, Roy and Scar tense up. Edward summons a wristblade from his automail arm. “Who the hell are you?” 

“How should I answer that?” The doctor rubs his own neck in absentminded contemplation. “You might know me as the man who created King Bradley. He was my proudest accomplishment.” 

“You created the Fuhrer?” Roy demands. He lifts his hand, and Riza notices he had armed himself with his gloves again. “It’s safe to say that you’re obviously working with the enemy.” 

“I didn’t realize it was you, Colonel!” The doctor’s eyes gleam, and his smile widens. “I thought that you were at the radio station, but you’ve come here to meet me in person. I can’t tell you how much trouble you’ve saved me!”

The doctor raises his hand in signal. Eleven enemy combatants drop down from the ceiling above them, landing on their feet with catlike agility. The enemies are men in their sixties, large and muscular, each armed with steel swords that Riza recognizes. All eleven men rush them at once, moving as one. 

Edward and Roy dart off to the right, Scar to the left. Riza follows Edward and the Colonel. Two opponents engage Edward, and he lashes out with his wristblade, mounting a solid defense. “Who are these guys?” he cries. 

“I think they’re dummy soldiers!” Roy calls back. Riza stands back-to-back with the Colonel and takes aim at the men rushing around them, separating them from Edward and Scar. They move with surprising, disorienting swiftness, and only one in four of her shots hits. A twenty-five percent success rate is abysmal. However, that percentage should rise as she learns her opponents’ movement patterns. 

“No!” Scar dodges a killing blow from one of their enemies. “They move too deliberately, not just on instinct! These men were the other candidates to become King Bradley!” 

Riza turns to Scar in disbelief. “These men were gathered at birth and raised by the state,” Roy tells her, his gaze jumping from one identical opponent to the other. “Specifically educated and trained in combat for the sole purpose of becoming the Fuhrer. It took eleven unsuccessful attempts before the creation of King Bradley.”

The men have fallen back to the shadows, for now. They crouch there like animals waiting to pounce on their prey, their crimson eyes glowing in the gloom. 

“You can call them the leftovers, I guess.” The doctor is bent to the ground again, scratching additions to his transmutation circle. “But after years of training, they’re still warriors in their own right.”

The men attack again, targeting Edward and Scar first. Edward holds them at bay with his blade. Scar grabs one of the men, flinging him away. Roy extends his hand, preparing to snap. A Fuhrer candidate kicks him in the arm, disrupting his aim. Riza aims her rifle at the man who attacked Roy, but then another enemy leaps in front of her, wresting her rifle from her hands and tossing it aside. He lashes out with his sword, and Riza feels the swish of the air in front of her as she jumps back, just in time to avoid the strike. 

She draws her two pistols and fires with both in quick succession. At such close range, she should be guaranteed to hit, but her ratio of shots fired to hits hovers around fifty percent. Edward and Scar are conducting themselves well, but Roy seems to be having as much difficulty attacking with Flame Alchemy as she is with her guns. Their enemies move swiftly, and she and Scar and Edward are moving almost as quickly in an attempt to avoid them. The Colonel has little hope of landing an attack that doesn’t also risk harming one of them. Roy finally slams a fist into the jaw of one of the candidates, sending him flying. 

Riza picks up on the approach of another enemy before Roy does. She almost calls out to him, but then three candidates converge on her and she has to flat-out sprint in order to avoid their swords. The other candidate attacks, very nearly slicing Roy’s head off. Roy ducks and then uses his momentum to swing upward, hitting him with two vicious hooked punches to the face.

Riza rushes to the Colonel, and she grits her teeth against a cry of frustration as another three enemies intercept her, circling her. One of the Fuhrer candidates traps Roy in a headlock. He manages to land a blow to his attacker’s ribs and twist free, and he runs toward her, heedless of the candidate pursuing him. 

To her satisfaction, Riza hits all three of her targets, dropping them. She retreats, aiming at another two more following her, and both of her shots hit at center mass. Finally - her typical one-hundred percent success rate. Her back collides with Roy’s, and they turn to face one another. One of the candidates looms over the Colonel’s shoulder, sword at the ready. Riza shoots the enemy once in the forehead, once in the neck, and once in the shoulder. Roy stares, astonished, like he hadn’t even noticed his would-be attacker.

“You keep leaving your back wide open, sir,” Riza admonishes. 

“That’s because there’s someone I’ve entrusted it to.” Roy punches a candidate rushing toward him, knocking him into one of his brethren.

And then Edward disappears into thin air. One moment, he’s right there, just a few feet away from them, slashing at a candidate attacking him. In the next, he is gone _._ Riza freezes, taken aback. One of her shots misses a candidate’s forehead and hits him in the nose instead, shattering the bone. She scans the room frantically. There is no sign of Edward. 

She doesn’t have to call out to Scar and Roy to alert them of what has just happened. “What did you do to him?” the Colonel yells, whirling toward the doctor. 

“I opened the Portal of Truth.” A tendril of blue electricity races around the room as the doctor straightens, chuckling. “Don’t worry about where he’s gone. You’ll be joining him there soon enough.”

_Not on my watch._ Riza bristles, aiming her gun at the doctor. Then she hesitates, second-guessing the impulse to attack. What if he is the only person who can bring Edward back? Roy is a gifted alchemist, but he has never opened the Portal of Truth. He has never made someone vanish.

One of the candidates runs toward her then, distracting her. Riza aims at his forehead and pulls the trigger. 

The gun misfires. Her second gun is out of ammo. Shock and fear flood Riza’s system for one second. Just one second. That second is all it takes.

The candidate knocks her to the stone floor, throwing his entire weight behind the blow. The impact nearly cracks her skull. Riza cries out, unable to recognize the tiny, pitiable sound as something that could come from her. His forearm digs into her throat, strangling her.

“You bastard!” Roy roars, rushing toward the two of them. “Let her go!”

Three candidates surround him, caging him in with their swords, grabbing his arms. Uncharacteristic, legitimate panic is written on Roy’s face, and horror dawns on Riza at the realization that his gloves had been sliced apart. He is effectively disarmed. She has spare gloves in her pocket, and she struggles anew under her attacker’s grip, desperate to assist the Colonel. Every fiber of her being screams at her, demanding that she protect Roy _now._ The candidate applies more force, crushing her neck until it is all Riza can do to draw shallow, gasping breath after shallow, gasping breath.

The would-be Fuhrers wrestle Roy to the ground, subduing him, pinning his arms so that he has no hope of attacking. Even Scar is held at swordpoint by two candidates. Her own attacker wrenches her upright with brutal force, locking one arm around her throat and using the other to restrain her. 

She is powerless. Utterly helpless to save Roy and find Edward. This is a worst-case scenario out of her nightmares. Riza looks between the Colonel and Scar, trying desperately to figure out if and how she can salvage the situation. Out of the three of them, Scar seems best equipped to fight back against the candidates holding him. 

The doctor claps, distracting her. “Good! Just hold them there.” He folds his hands behind his back, another genial smile on his face. “Here we are. Colonel Mustang, I’m afraid that we’re out of time. At this point, you have no choice but to cooperate with us. I would like you to perform some human transmutation and open a portal for me.”

Human transmutation. The ultimate taboo. Riza’s skin crawls at the memory of that unspeakable thing in Edward and Alphonse’s former home in Resembool, the thing that had been their mother. 

Roy blinks, stunned by the casualness of the request. “Are you serious?”

“It doesn’t matter who.” The doctor spreads his arms and shrugs. “A parent you lost? A lover? A friend? Or that man you were so close to. What was his name again? Hughes? He’ll do just fine. I’ll get things set up for you right over here.” 

Dread creeps over her. _He wouldn’t,_ Riza tells herself. _He knows what is at stake._

Roy had been seething with fury just a moment ago. Now he stops struggling against his captors, his muscles going slack with surprise. “You mean I’m a sacrifice?” 

“Not yet.” The doctor lifts a finger, as if lecturing a curious student. “But as soon as you open the portal, you’ll become one.”

“That’s why the Elric brothers were chosen?” Roy asks, taking the question right from her lips.

“Yes, it is.” 

Riza doesn’t like where this is going. She resists, trying to wriggle free of her captor. He tightens his grip around her neck until she chokes, lightheaded from the lack of oxygen.

“They told me that human transmutation couldn’t be done!” Roy fires back. “Why would I even try to do it, knowing it would fail?” 

The doctor laughs. “You’re right. But all I need you to do is open the portal and then return.”

“No! I won’t be your puppet!” Even in these dire circumstances, the sound of the Colonel shouting makes Riza flinch. “You open it yourself!” 

“I told you that we have run out of time.” The doctor adjusts his glasses. He looks at her.

Riza’s world explodes in searing agony. Blood splatters across her face and gushes out from her neck, soaking her shirt and coat. She swallows with shock at the sick sensation, and that reflex makes her realize that her throat--

Her throat is in _pieces._

Roy stares at her. She has never seen him so aghast, not even on the night they learned of Hughes’ murder. 

Riza is no stranger to pain and fear. She had come to know both intimately on that day she had been fourteen and Father held her down on the bed as he tattooed the Flame Alchemy array onto her back. But she has never felt pain or fear like this. 

She had been at the top of her class in field medicine at the Academy. Even now, she can recognize that this is a mortal wound. All the breath leaves her body in a whimper as the candidate throws her to the floor, like a piece of discarded trash. 

(Riza remembers Envy’s howls of demented laughter. _I’m going to dump you at your Colonel’s feet like a rag._ )

“Lieutenant!” Roy screams, his voice breaking. Riza can’t respond. As hard as she tries to speak, nothing comes out except tiny, helpless rasps. The cut had been deep enough to damage her vocal cords. Her vision is fading, from shock or blood loss or both. All she can see is the bleak gray stone and the blood pooling underneath her. So much blood. 

The candidate grabs her by the arm, dragging her across the ground. The stone scrapes her face raw. Riza sees that she is leaving a trail of blood. The candidate is pulling her toward the transmutation circle, farther away from Roy. _No._ Desperation surges in her, an all-consuming urge to not be separated from her Colonel. Riza tries to reach out to him, but her hands and arms don’t cooperate. Her hands are cold. Her fingers are numb. 

“Maybe you’ve had a change of heart?” The doctor suggests. “What do you think, Mustang?”

“I’ll kill you!” Roy snarls. He hadn’t even sounded like this when he had been threatening Envy. 

The candidate tosses her into the transmutation circle. Riza remembers Trisha Elric again, or what was _not_ Trisha Elric, and she wants to weep. She can’t allow that. She won’t allow herself to be desecrated like that. 

“Lieutenant!” Roy’s cry is raw with unconcealed anguish. “Are you still with me? Answer me!”

_I can’t die,_ Riza realizes. _I’m not ready to die._ She hasn’t had enough time. She hasn’t done enough. She hasn’t done a single thing to help rebuild Ishval or reform Amestris. She can’t leave her Colonel alone and without her for guidance and support. 

“Now, complete the transmutation and become the fifth sacrifice,” the doctor prompts. “Come on. If you don’t hurry, the Lieutenant will be lost to you forever. Unless you want to transmute her after she has already died? That would be acceptable, too.” 

It takes every bit of her effort to speak. “I’m not going to die,” Riza manages, trying to reassure Roy. He can’t give in to this manipulation. He can’t become a sacrifice. That would be playing right into Father’s hands. As long as Roy doesn’t become a sacrifice, then Father’s plan for the creation of the nationwide transmutation circle can never come to fruition. The people of Amestris will remain safe, as long as Roy does not perform human transmutation. She gropes at her neck, placing her hand on top of the wound, trying in vain to staunch the bleeding. Her hand is slick with blood, coated in it, within a couple of moments. “I’m under orders not to die.” 

“If it were that easy to obtain an immortal body, my dear, it wouldn’t be very sporting, would it?” The doctor folds his arms behind his back. “So, what will it be? Your precious woman is about to die. If you don’t act, she’ll bleed to death.”

Roy is shaking. His eyes brim with tears. He never cries. 

“Luckily, I happen to be a doctor, and an alchemist.” The doctor’s coat rustles. “And I have a Philosopher’s Stone to add to the bargain as well. I am able, with all certainty, to save this woman’s life.”

_A Philosopher’s Stone._ Riza recoils. No. Not that. Not that sanitized euphemism for the human souls of sacrificed victims. She won’t have that used on her. It defies every one of her most deeply held morals and principles. She tries to say as much to Roy, but she can’t bring herself to speak. She can barely even breathe, now. Every breath sends more blood spilling out from the wound in her neck.

“But if you don’t make up your mind in time, there’s nothing I can do,” the doctor says matter-of-factly. “Whether you like it or not, her fate is up to you now, Colonel. Do you want her blood on your hands forever?”

_Don’t give in,_ Riza pleads, willing him to understand. Roy knows her like he knows his own mind. He knows her better than anyone in this life. He should know that she would never want to live at such great cost; at the cost of millions of Amestrians’ lives. 

“Look at her, so quiet and still,” the doctor observes. “Perhaps she’s dead. What do you think?”

Roy is beyond words. The sound he makes, as he strains against his captors to get to her, is like that of a desperate, cornered wolf. 

“Colonel.” Talking is unimaginably painful, and it saps at Riza’s already drained strength. “You don’t have to do this. Don’t sacrifice everything for my sake.” 

The doctor beams. “But you will do it, won’t you, Mustang?”

Riza can’t bear to look at Roy anymore. She is terrified that he will give in. She can feel that he’s on the verge of succumbing, just like she felt it in the moments before he careened out of control with Envy. 

Riza prays that her death will come quickly, before Roy can agree. It nearly shatters her. She isn’t ready to go. She has so much left to do for Ishval and Amestris. She thought she prepared herself for death before walking into this mission. She had been wrong.

It is the prospect of leaving her most precious people behind that breaks her heart most. She wants to see Edward and Alphonse with their bodies restored, with Alphonse able to feel the warmth of sunlight on his face. She wants to see Edward breathe easy, unburdened, for the first time in years. She wants to watch Rebecca get to have the wedding she has been dreaming of since their time in the Academy. She wants to work alongside her Colonel and her unit to restore Ishval and reform Amestris into something better than it is. She wants to play with Black Hayate at the park.

She wants to kiss Roy, one last time.

Riza almost sobs at the terrible loss of it all. Then she pushes the grief and misery aside. She doesn’t want these to be her last thoughts.

As her strength fades, she thinks of Roy holding her in his arms, stroking her hair, kissing her forehead. She remembers their last kiss, long and passionate, in his car. He made her feel so very loved. That is what she wants to hold on to, until the very end. Riza thinks of her mother, and a sense of peace washes over her. They’ll be together again soon.

Riza looks up, holding that sensation close. She’s still not ready, but she accepts what is to come.

She sees a hint of movement above her. Something materializing from the ceiling where the Fuhrer candidates entered the room earlier. She wonders if her vision can be trusted. Riza blinks, and fights to open her eyes again.

It hadn’t been a hallucination. One of the chimera, one of Edward’s allies, is stealthily creeping down from above. In all of the earlier chaos with Roy and Envy, and Edward and Scar joining them, Riza completely forgot about the chimera and Mei. 

She dismisses her thoughts of dying. She can’t die until she warns her Colonel not to do anything rash. Riza glances upward at the ceiling, in the direction of the chimera. To her intense gratitude, Roy tracks the movement of her gaze, following it with his own. Thankfully, he keeps it discreet.

Roy goes limp in his captors’ arms, his strength deserting him. “All right,” he whispers. 

“Good!” The doctor crows, not understanding that Roy had been addressing her. “I knew you’d see reason!”

“All right, Lieutenant,” Roy clarifies. He bows his head. When he speaks again, he does it with his characteristic force. “I won’t perform the transmutation.”

“You’d forsake her?” The doctor asks, appalled. “How very cold of you.”

“Hypocrite,” Roy challenges, in a bid to buy some time. “You used these men as your sacrificial pawns.”

The doctor falls for it, and as he talks, the chimera inches further down the ceiling. Roy smirks his satisfaction. “That’s just the sort of overconfidence that gets you in trouble.” 

The doctor vanishes almost as suddenly as Edward, snatched up by the chimera above. His absence means that her Colonel is safe. Riza allows her eyes to drift shut, satisfied.

In the Academy, she learned that hearing was the last sense to leave the dying. The sounds of battle rage around her - the impact of two sets of feet hitting the floor, one heavy, and one very light. Riza vaguely senses movement, disturbance, the clang of swords on swords, bodies hitting the ground. Someone sprinting towards her. 

“Out of my way!” Heat searing her face, even at a distance. A crash, and an explosion. 

“Lieutenant!” Roy crashes to his knees beside her. He lifts her off the ground, pulling her into his lap, cradling her close. “Stay with me,” he commands, and there is a note of pleading underneath the order. 

The change in position had been agonizing. Riza almost whimpers, her head lolling to the side. “Lieutenant!” Roy begs, squeezing her shoulder as if trying to bring her back to herself. “Open your eyes! Lieutenant!” 

Riza turns her face against him and breathes in, the breath tiny and labored. His heart is racing. He smells like smoke and fire. Her fingers close around the lapel of his coat. At least she had been able to hold him, one last time. She wishes Roy didn’t sound like this, ragged with anguish, but he still makes her feel safe and loved.

“Don’t you dare die.” Roy buries his face in her hair, and she feels the tears dripping into her locks. “Stay with me, Lieutenant!” 

_I want to._ If Riza could say anything, assure him of anything, it would be that. She wanted so much, for the two of them. So much she never told him. She never even told him she loved him, and now it is too late. She tightens her grip on his coat. 

“Let me help!” A girl’s voice, frantic. Small hands tugging her away from her Colonel, placing her down on the floor. 

Lightning, energy, surges around her. The telltale crackle of alchemy. Riza’s reflex is fear and distrust, the memory of Trisha Elric haunting her, but she can do nothing to resist. She almost cries out as the wound in her neck stitches itself closed. Suddenly, she can breathe again. Something inside her has shifted, and there is the sense of slightly restored strength and vitality.

“Lieutenant!” Roy lifts her up and hugs her tight, crushing her against his chest. 

“I stopped the bleeding for now, but she’ll still need to see a doctor.” Belatedly, Riza realizes that it must be Mei who had helped her. “And please be careful with her! You don’t want to reopen her wound!”

“Thank you,” Roy breathes. He relaxes his grip on her just a little, as though he’s afraid that she will disappear if he lets go. “I owe you.” 

For the first time in an eternity, Riza manages to open her eyes. Roy stares down at her, still so worried. He seems to have aged a decade over the past day. Deep lines of strain have engraved themselves around his eyes, reddened and swollen. Her chest hurts, and not from her injuries. 

“Colonel.” Her voice hasn’t regained its strength or volume yet. “I’m so sorry.” She had put him through hell. If she hadn’t allowed herself to be restrained by that candidate-- 

“Don’t speak,” Roy orders her at once, rubbing her back, trying to soothe her. “Just rest now.” 

Riza nestles against him. “You understood my signal.” What had happened earlier between them hadn’t broken things irrevocably. They still understood one another. 

Roy smiles at that, as gently as a breaking dawn. She thought she would never see that smile again. “We’ve been together long enough.” He strokes her hair. “And besides, I know that glare you were giving me earlier. It meant, _if you try to do human transmutation, I’ll shoot you_.”

Riza returns his smile. It feels like years since she had been able to do that. She leans into him, and Roy hugs her again, blind to the combat around them. He whispers a few words in Xingese she remembers as the blessing he gave her last spring. This time, though, he translates the words differently. “My heart,” Roy says, so softly that only she will be able to hear him. He presses a gentle kiss to her forehead. “I love you so much.”

On some subconscious level, Riza has known and understood this for quite some time. Her Colonel has made it clear to her in so many little moments. The night Roy healed her bruised wrists and stayed with her until she fell asleep, and left her his coat to hold onto through the night. The way he opened up to her, confiding his fears and insecurities, and listened to her when she reassured him. How he responded with unhesitating acceptance and tenderness when she shared her own secret with him.

Riza felt it in their first kiss, and their second. In the way Roy held her hand, after they visited Hughes’ grave, and how he told her, _I wouldn’t be able to move forward, if I lost you._

She even felt it when he relented, with Envy, throwing his attack away when she told him what she would do if she was forced to shoot him. _I can’t afford to lose you._

It is something else entirely to hear it spoken aloud. Riza pulls back and looks at her Colonel, lost for words. 

The last Fuhrer candidate collapses to the ground, incapacitated by one of the chimera. Both of them turn toward the sound, and Scar, Mei, and the chimera converge in the center of the room. It reminds her that they are still in the midst of a battle, still in the field. They are no closer to finding Father, and Edward is still missing. 

Riza tries to stand, and fails. “I’ve got you,” Roy tells her, easing her to her feet alongside him. He keeps his arm around her, holding her steady, as they make their way over to join the others. Roy looks at each of them in turn - both chimeras, Mei, and Scar. “Thank you, all of you, for your help.”

“Sure,” one of the chimeras responds. “It was no problem at all.”

Mei scans the room. “The doctor dropped the stone - where is it?” 

Riza sees the glass vial, filled with a dark red liquid, glistening in the shadows near the entryway to the room. Not the entryway they had arrived through; the other one she had noticed as soon as they entered.

Heavy footfalls punctuate the silence. Fuhrer Bradley emerges from the shadows, picking up the Philosopher’s Stone. The Fuhrer is uncharacteristically disheveled, his uniform coat discarded. The shoulder of his white shirt is soaked with blood, and another large bloodstain blossoms out above his waist. His dark eye patch is nowhere to be seen, and he regards them with silent contempt. 

Mei utters a little gasp of fright. “Bradley,” Roy hisses. Riza grows cold, so cold, despite her coat. Of course the Fuhrer hadn’t died in that train explosion in the East. 

Bradley’s fists are clenched. Riza notes that, and catches sight of something unusual. Blood drips down the Fuhrer’s injured arm, but there are no sparks of red light. “His wounds aren’t regenerating,” Roy murmurs, alerting her and Mei, the two standing closest to him, of the potential weakness.

“It’s been quite some time, hasn’t it, Colonel?” Bradley asks. His tone is flat, polite, but Riza picks up on the threatening undercurrents there.

“It has, sir,” Roy returns, so evenly that they could have been exchanging passing greetings in the hallways of Central Command. “I’d be lying if I said you were looking as good as ever.”

Bradley’s eyes narrow. To Riza’s intense surprise, he looks directly at her. “Knowing that weakling’s heart of yours, I thought that if someone dear to you fell, you would do anything to save them. Even if it meant human transmutation.” 

She feels her Colonel’s intake of breath. His fingers tighten around her arm, holding her protectively close to him. “There was a time that I might have,” Roy replies. “But that time is behind me. I have people by my side who will stop me from being reckless, and keep me on the right path.” 

Bradley scoffs. “And here I was, under the impression that you were all pathetic creatures who could never learn a lesson properly. But apparently, there are those like you, who can learn. Who can change.” He shakes his head, his disgust apparent. “That’s one more reason why I can’t stand you humans. It infuriates me that I can’t predict how you’ll behave.” 

Mei gasps, and Riza looks down at her. “What’s wrong?” Scar asks, forestalling her own inquiry.

“He’s right under us,” Mei squeaks. 

Riza’s foreboding grows. She stares down at the floor, at their shadows. In all the terror of the past several minutes, she had forgotten about Pride. A horrible spurting sound echoes through the room, and she spins around just in time to see the doctor, and the chimera who trapped him, both fall to the ground. The chimera is bleeding from several deep lacerations on his arms. 

“Gerso!” The other chimera shouts, joining his comrade. He crouches at his side, trying to help him up. 

“Run,” Gerso croaks. His friends ignore him, lifting him into an upright position from his spot on the floor, and carrying him to join them. 

Mei nods her agreement, quick and jerky. “Something terrible is coming. I can feel it.” 

Riza’s palms are clammy with cold sweat. She hasn’t experienced dread like this since the last time she encountered Pride. Wrath at their back. Pride beneath them. _Or--_ she shudders. _Above them._

Riza looks up. A half dozen eyes blink open from the ceiling, transfixing them with a chilling glare. Tendrils of dark shadow slither down from above. Each tendril bares rows of sharp teeth.

His descent complete, Pride stands in the center of the room, cloaked in the form of Selim Bradley. Roy reacts swiftly, handing her over to one of the chimera. “Please look after my Lieutenant,” he instructs. 

Before she can say a word to stop him, Roy turns toward Wrath. Wrath snatches up two swords lying discarded on the floor and sprints at them, ready to attack. His eyes glow red, just like his brethren. 

Roy throws an arm out to protect her. He retaliates with the other hand, sending a massive jet of flame at the Fuhrer. Wrath leaps impossibly high and far, clear of the explosion, striking out at Roy. He lands on top of him, trapping Roy on the floor, his boots digging into his chest.

Roy’s cry of pain cuts her to the core. “Colonel!” Riza dashes toward him, but the chimera catches her around the shoulders, pulling her back. Her muscles and bones go liquid with terror and disbelief as Wrath brandishes his swords. He drives the points through Roy’s palms in one savage motion, impaling both of his hands. Her Colonel’s tortured scream nearly sends her to her knees. 

Gerso and one of the other chimera dash toward him, trying to help. Pride whips them with his shadow tendrils, lifting and throwing them like a pair of rag dolls. Wrath doesn’t let Roy up. He stabs his swords in deeper, twisting them through Roy’s palms, just for the sake of tormenting him. 

Riza never truly understood rage until this moment. Her vision bleeds red. She forgets the humane execution she had wanted to give Envy. Wrath deserves the torture Roy wanted for the little homunculus. Wrath deserves to be torn limb from limb. She would do it herself, if she could. She has none of her guns left; she has nothing but her fists and teeth and fingernails, but maybe she can do enough damage with those. She will do anything to save her Colonel. “Let me go!” she shouts. 

“I’m sorry, Lieutenant.” The chimera doesn’t relax his grip, not even a little bit. “You’ll only get yourself killed, in the state you’re in.” 

Shadows twist around and over Wrath and Roy, still pinned by the Fuhrer, creating a transmutation circle. “Well, Colonel Mustang,” Pride comments. “It looks like you’re our fifth.”

The room comes alive with blue lightning, racing the length and breadth of Pride’s transmutation circle. A similar thing had happened just after Edward disappeared. Riza pushes at the chimera’s arms, petrified that Roy will vanish too, but he doesn’t budge. 

“I didn’t want to resort to this, but there’s no choice.” Pride looks up at the ceiling. Far above them, on the streets of Central, the solar eclipse must have begun. “We’ve run out of time.” 

Wrath leans in close to Roy. “Whether you like it or not, we’re going to force you to open the portal. Prepare yourself.” 

“No!” Riza screams. The roar of the lightning drowns her out. 

She isn’t an alchemist, but she understands some of what it means to open this portal. Opening the portal, committing the ultimate taboo, had cost Edward his left leg and right arm. It had cost Alphonse’s entire body. What cost will Roy pay? 

Wrath ignores Roy’s refusals. Pride curls his shadow tendrils around her Colonel’s neck. “He’s safely pinned. Move back, Wrath.” 

Wrath withdraws his swords from Roy’s palms, the blades sliding free with a sickening sound. Roy howls in pain, his hands spasming, and his scream is one of the most heartrending things she has ever heard. (Riza is reminded of the sounds Mother made at the end, when she drowned in her own lungs. _I can’t,_ she thinks, blind with panic. _I can’t watch the person I love die in front of me again, while I’m powerless to save them._ ) 

Wrath steps away, and then looks at her Colonel over his shoulder, echoing her own thoughts. “I wonder what will be taken from you, Mustang.” 

“Colonel!” Riza lunges forward, but Darius holds her back again. 

“No!” Mei cries. “You’ll be caught up in it too!”

She doesn’t care. She will not let Roy disappear like Edward had. She will not let him go alone, without her protection. The energy that Pride and Wrath created surges, filling the room with white-hot light. Darius refuses to let go of her. 

“Colonel!” Riza’s voice breaks. She’s almost sobbing. 

The light subsides. Thick, dark smoke suffuses the room. It finally clears enough for Riza to see Wrath staring impassively at them through the smoke. A hideous, misshapen lump lies on the stone floor between them, dark as tar and swollen to twice the size of a human body. A disjointed human arm protrudes from it, and a wide, gaping mouth and two bloodshot eyes complete the nightmarish image. 

Riza’s stomach turns. She takes a half-step back, unable to repress her revulsion. It is just like what Edward and Alphonse did to Trisha Elric. The doctor and Wrath wanted Roy to do that to _her._

“The transmutation is complete,” Wrath announces. 

Riza comes back to herself somewhat. She searches the room, finding it devastatingly empty, save for Wrath. “Colonel?” Her question comes out small and lost. Roy is gone. Edward is gone. 

“Oh, Mustang is still alive. The Colonel should be joining our father right about now. Although…” Wrath trails off. He looks at her like he used to when he would try to bait her, during those long seven months of being his assistant. “I can’t vouch for his physical well-being.”

Fury consumes her. Devours her. Riza trembles from the force of it. There is nothing she wants more than to tear his eyes out and beat him, fists and feet striking into soft flesh over and over again, until he is bloodied and broken beneath her. 

“Do you see what kind of shape I’m in right now?” Wrath asks. He’s using his swords to help keep himself upright. Blood from his shoulder wound and the wound in his side drip down onto the stone floor. His movements are still free of stiffness as he settles into a battle stance. “Which of you wants the honor of taking down the Fuhrer of Amestris? You chimera? The outsider? Mustang’s dog? Or perhaps you’d all like to come at me at once.”

Riza’s injured right shoulder throbs, warning her that she won’t be able to throw many punches with that arm. She grips the injured shoulder, cursing her own weakness. If she just had her guns--

“I don’t think we can beat him, even though he’s in this state,” Darius mutters to Gerso. 

Gerso looks past Wrath. “Mei said Father was right underneath that hole in the ceiling. Bradley must not want us to go down there.”

Riza’s gaze snaps down to the floor. If Father is underneath the floor, and Roy and Edward are with him, then they’re not far from her at all. All they need is an alchemist who can break apart the stone floor and allow them to descend to where Father is. Mei and Scar would both be capable of that. 

“That’s where the chi flow is strongest,” Mei agrees. “It has to be there.”

Scar steps forward and slams an open palm onto the floor. The ground tears itself asunder, a pit opening up beneath them. “Go!” he yells. 

Darius picks her up with surprising care, carrying her as he jumps into the pit. It isn’t a long drop, only about four or five meters. There is nothing down here except rock and stone. There is no sign of Roy, Edward, Alphonse, or the other sacrifices. Riza looks for Mei, but the girl has disappeared as abruptly and completely as Edward and Roy. She and the chimeras can do nothing but watch and listen as Scar and Wrath battle it out aboveground. 

The situation deteriorates in a matter of minutes. A huge chunk of the floor collapses, and Darius and Gerso retreat, stumbling back just in time to avoid falling into the depths. Pitch-black, amorphous masses surge and seethe in the area where the ground had been. Riza has never seen anything like it before, not in almost a decade of fighting and working alongside alchemists. 

“What is that?” Darius breathes, mesmerized by the pulsating, profoundly unsettling darkness. “Is that where Father is?” 

If Father is down there, then so are her Colonel and Edward. If not for Darius’s grip on her, Riza would have thrown herself into that dark unknown without hesitation. The seconds tick by, turning into minutes. Her watch had shattered sometime during the fight with Envy, and her nerves are rubbed so raw that she isn’t able to keep track of time as she usually does. Riza’s head spins. Her chest aches, like she is being crushed by a tremendous weight. Dizziness envelopes her in waves. She can’t tell whether this is a panic attack or whether her body is reacting to the consequences of almost two liters of blood loss. 

She has no idea where Roy and Edward are, or in what condition they are. Scar and Wrath are still locked in battle. Anything could be happening above ground in Central. Rebecca, Breda, Falman, and Fuery are up there, and maybe Grumman, too. The homunculi had used Roy as the fifth sacrifice. _The last one,_ Pride had said. Does that mean that they had activated the nationwide transmutation circle? That every human soul in Amestris has been consumed?

The thought of Rebecca and her unit and Grumman, and everyone, _everyone,_ lying motionless on the ground, almost makes Riza sick. Everyone she loves. Every man, woman, and child in Amestris. Their faces flit through her mind, disorganized and chaotic. Havoc. Gracia. Elicia. Winry. Mrs. Bradley. Her neighbors in her apartment building. The construction crew repairing the stretch of badly damaged pavement two streets away from Central Command. Ms. Laura and her staff at the tea shop. Mrs. Sebenius, who owned the Sweet Spring Lunchroom in East City. Dr. Mullens, Black Hayate’s veterinarian, and the rest of the staff at the clinic. Elijah Fox and the other residents of the Central City Veterans Home. Olivier Armstrong and her Briggs soldiers, and Major Armstrong. General Hall. Her surviving friends on Sniper Team Seven at Southern Command Center. 

Everyone in Amestris, lost. They have failed. Even if Roy does return to her, what kind of ruined country awaits them above? Where can they possibly go from here? How can they move forward? 

“I can stand,” Riza mumbles, disoriented. 

Darius shakes his head. “Sorry, Lieutenant. If I let you go, you’ll just jump down there.” 

Riza closes her eyes, trying her best to hold on to her composure. The most momentous battle in the history of her country, millions of souls at stake, and she is completely useless to do anything to help anybody. Scar, or her Colonel and Edward. It is unbearable. Despair envelops her like Pride’s shadows, threatening to engulf her completely. 

One single thought holds that despair at bay. The memory of an order that her Colonel gave her, once. _How could you lose the will to fight? You need to learn to keep it together under pressure. You can’t shut down like that, no matter what the circumstances are. As a soldier, and as my subordinate, you need to firm up your resolve._

Riza opens her eyes. She takes a deep breath, centering herself as much as she can. She can’t give up. No matter how dire the circumstances are, she cannot and will not give up. As long as she is alive, she will keep fighting. She looks up at the mouth of the pit so sharply she almost pulls a muscle in her neck, still stiff and achy after the earlier trauma.

“What is it?” Darius asks, peering upwards.

“I hear someone.” Riza ignores her lightheadedness. “There’s someone else up there now. A friend I haven’t seen in a while.”

Lan Fan. She can’t quite hear what Lan Fan is saying, but she knows that voice. The room above them erupts with energy, and by now, Riza recognizes the alchemy as belonging to Scar. She and the chimera throw their arms up to shield their faces, their hair standing on end in response to the extraordinary outpouring of power. 

It takes an age to die down. Finally, Scar calls out to them, weary from exertion. “You can come up now. It’s safe.”

The chimera clamber up the walls of the pit, Darius holding onto her. Riza stares around the ruined room, attempting to piece together what happened. Wrath’s desiccated form lies motionless at the far side of the room. Scar hunches over the transmutation circle, bleeding from a dozen wounds, Lan Fan at his side. The girl’s eyes widen when she sees Riza. For her part, Riza is startled by the genuine concern that floods over her when she realizes what a state Scar is in. 

She opens her mouth to ask what Scar did with the transmutation circle. She’s cut off by a dozen footsteps pounding against the stone floor. Riza wonders if she’s hallucinating; if she has finally broken down in response to the traumatic stress of the day. A small company of Briggs soldiers dashes into the room, and they stop dead when they catch sight of her and the chimera.

They are closely followed by Major Armstrong and Major General Armstrong. The Major is without his uniform coat for some reason, and the Major General’s arm is in a makeshift sling. Otherwise, they are unharmed. The implications of this, of fourteen people whole and healthy, souls intact, hit her like a ton of bricks. Riza’s relief is so acute that it is intoxicating. 

“Lieutenant Hawkeye?” Major Armstrong gasps. 

“Major Armstrong--” Riza starts. What does this mean? Is everyone on the surface all right? 

Heat singes her back, and Darius’s with her. He drops her, and nearly falls over himself apologizing. A jet of flame rockets up from the subterranean depths beneath their feet, blasting straight up through the ceiling, clear to the sky above. 

The others gape up at the ceiling, but one of the Briggs soldiers, wearing the uniform of a field medic, hastens toward her. “You look like you’ve lost a lot of blood. Do you have any open wounds?”

“I’m fine,” Riza says quickly, indicating Scar. “Please tend to that man over there.” 

The ground beneath them quivers, and the air is rife with the grinding of stone on stone. A pillar of stone shoots up from the pit. Edward and Alphonse’s alchemy teacher, Izumi Curtis, stands on the pillar, Roy kneeling beside her, hands braced on the stone as if grounding himself. He seems whole, completely intact, though pale. Riza could weep with relief. She tries to stand, but the movement is too quick. It makes her dizzy, and she stumbles and collapses to her knees. 

“Darling!” Sig leaps onto the stone platform, and Izumi jumps into her husband’s arms, embracing him tightly, before drawing back. “I need to go up. Look after Mustang.”

“Right.” Sig helps her Colonel off the platform, and it is evident that there is something off about Roy’s movements. His steps are small and tentative, like a child learning how to walk for the first time. He leans heavily against Sig. As soon as the two of them are back on solid ground, Roy sinks down to his knees, his head bowed. 

“Colonel!” Riza rushes to his side. Only the presence of the other soldiers keeps her from throwing her arms around Roy and kissing him. “Are you injured?”

“My sight is gone.” Roy lifts his head toward her, and Riza can’t bite back her gasp at seeing the clouded cast that has settled over his dark eyes. “Lieutenant, how are your injuries?”

Shock and grief tangle within her. He’s asking how her injuries are because he can’t confirm her well-being for himself. There is nothing that Roy hates more than feeling helpless. Save for his intelligence, this is possibly the worst thing Truth could have robbed from him. 

“Don’t think about me.” Riza is briefly, guiltily grateful that he can’t see her expression crumple. She almost reaches out to him, to cup his face in her hand, but then she remembers herself, pulling back. “Worry about yourself for once. Your eyes--”

“Lieutenant,” Roy interrupts, and the resolve is clear on his face. “Can you still fight?”

She understands, then, what he means to do - for _them_ to do, together. Of course her Colonel isn’t giving up or stepping away from the conflict ahead, regardless of his changed circumstances. Riza draws back, preparing herself to fight. She nods, resolute. “Yes, sir.” 

She glances at Lan Fan, staring up at the pillar jutting into the sky. There is a flash of movement, a black-clad figure dashing down the pillar. Riza reaches instinctively for one of her guns, though she finds her pocket empty. Ling Yao lands in front of them, gaping down at Wrath’s corpse. When Lan Fan greets him, he shakes his head. “It’s Greed now. The Father of the homunculi is going berserk up there. I’ll send up all of you who can fight, and I’ll come along too. You could use someone who knows what’s going on.” 

Greed creates another platform of stone, even larger than the one Izumi used to rise to the surface. Riza eases Roy to his feet, and the two of them join the company of Briggs soldiers and chimera gathered on the platform. “Good,” Greed decrees, surveying the assembled group of soldiers. Then his eyes narrow, and he points at her, Gerso, and Olivier Armstrong. “The frog and the two women - all of you get down from there! You’re injured!”

“Absolutely not!” Major General Armstrong turns red with anger. “I still have forces who need me to lead them!”

Greed glares up at her. “Get down here, now! This is no time for a competition about who’s in charge!” 

A couple of Briggs soldiers, both outfitted with communications headsets and a portable telephone, interrupt her. “General, we have a message from headquarters.” 

“Operations, it’s me,” the Major General barks into the phone. “What’s happening?”

Her soldiers’ response is inaudible. “Blown up?” Major Armstrong echoes, aghast. “Half of Central Command?” 

“Do you see the power that Father has?” Greed paces back and forth in front of the platform. “He looks like an ordinary man. However, he’s in possession of a Philosopher’s Stone powered by many thousands of souls.” Greed’s expression darkens. “He’s used its energy to claim the powers of God for himself. As alchemists, you understand the trouble this presents.”

Riza is no alchemist, but she doesn’t need to be one to understand that this Father creature is leagues more powerful than even the strongest of the homunculi he created. She swallows at the thought, determined not to betray any fear. The stakes are too high. Now is the time for courage and steadiness. Major Armstrong and Roy remain quiet, clearly disconcerted by the troubling implications. 

“And that’s why any ordinary humans should leave now,” Greed presses. 

Riza refuses to step away from her position at her Colonel’s side. She may just be an ordinary human, unable to withstand a creature with the powers of God, but she has someone that she needs to support. 

“My men are still fighting, and I will not just abandon my forces,” Major General Armstrong snaps. “I won’t abdicate my duty as their commanding officer.” 

She gets back on the communications headset at the urging of her soldiers aboveground. Riza’s mind races, processing all the new information she has received in just the past few minutes. There is the current conflict aboveground, the state of Central and Central Command’s forces, Roy’s altered status… 

Part of her is already working to identify solutions to the myriad of new concerns they face. (Roy’s blindness shouldn’t prohibit him from taking the Presidency of Amestris. Written materials can be converted into raised Amestrian script using special machines available at Central’s public library. She can read for him, when necessary. However, there will be a whole new array of safety and security concerns for her to address, as his bodyguard.) 

Riza tries to keep herself from thinking too far ahead. They have to focus on surviving the next hour and helping to defeat Father, before she starts thinking about anything else. She has never been so grateful that she insisted on the entire unit performing monthly combat training sessions in low- or no-visibility environments. At least she knows exactly how to work with Roy in the fight to come. 

Major General Armstrong finally hangs up the phone. She stands on the tips of her toes, trying to place herself level with her brother, and slams the phone into his chest. “Listen up, Alex! I order you to go up there and win, at any cost.”

Major Armstrong salutes her. “Of course!”

“Good.” There’s a note of impatience in Roy’s voice. “Let’s move. Hawkeye?”

“Hold on!” Greed strides onto the platform. “You two aren’t in any shape to fight.”

Roy turns toward him, and his tone brooks no argument. “I’m going to burn his Philosopher’s Stone, and I’ll need the Lieutenant’s help in order to do so.” 

Darius places a hand on Greed’s shoulder. “Just let it go. We need to move, now.”

Lan Fan hops up onto the platform, as Major General Armstrong and Gerso descend, joining Sig and Scar. “I’m coming too. It’s my job to protect the Young Lord.” 

Major Armstrong strikes the stone platform with his fists, sending it rising up toward the surface. The sudden movement makes her nauseous, and Riza suppresses it, exhaling in and out in anticipation of battle. Beside her, Roy stands ramrod-straight and tense. 

They emerge onto the field. After so many hours spent underground, Riza blinks hard in the sunlight, brightly colored spots exploding behind her eyes. It doesn’t help her dizziness. The ground swims beneath her. Roy shows no reaction to the light. Riza relays information about their surroundings to him as quickly as she can, explaining Father’s position on the battleground in relation to theirs. “Twelve, Colonel. There are no obstructions in our path. We’re at a distance of about thirteen meters.”

Roy nods. He holds an arm out to her, a silent request for support, and Riza places her hand on his shoulder. Roy snaps his fingers, unleashing a torrent of flame toward Father’s distant figure. It takes just over half a minute to burn out. “Did I hit him?” he asks.

His frustration at not being able to discern that information on his own is palpable. Riza tightens her grip on his shoulder, trying to calm him. “You were off just a little bit. Adjust to twelve o’clock.” 

“I can’t tell how much to throttle the flames.” Roy claps his hands together like Edward, preparing another attack.

“You don’t have to throttle them.” Riza re-calculates the distance separating them from the enemy. “Range fifty - no, fifty-three.” 

Father sends Roy’s flames straight back at them. “Incoming attack, Colonel!” Riza warns. “Dead ahead!”

Roy slams his hands into the ground, throwing up a wide stone wall to protect her and Major Armstrong from the attack. The flames surge to either side of them, making the air uncomfortably hot, but their skin doesn’t burn. This style of fighting is a little less intuitive due to the necessity of constant verbal communication, but so far, things have been working well. “Nicely done, sir,” Riza praises, pushing her sweat-dampened bangs away from her forehead. 

The successful maneuver seems to encourage him. “It helps to have you near me, Lieutenant. Stay close.”

Riza does, for her sake as well as Roy’s. Tracking the rapid action of the fight and the constantly changing positions of the combatants worsens her dizziness and her nausea. She develops a splitting headache, and she can feel herself inching closer and closer to blacking out. She bites the inside of her cheek and curls her fingers into fists, letting her fingernails dig into her palms, relying on the pain to keep her grounded. _Pull yourself together. Stay alert._

Roy is aware of her struggles. He wraps an arm around her, holding her steady. It is inappropriate for them to be so close, but Riza braces her hand against his chest, letting him keep her upright. “Everything is going to be fine, Lieutenant,” he promises. “Fullmetal will finish this.” 

Riza watches as the boy she met five summers ago in Resembool defeats the creature who thought to make himself a god. 

-

Alphonse doesn’t return from the other side. For the first time in months, standing at the ruined front entrance of Central Command, Riza prays. She closes her eyes, the spring sunlight beating down on her slightly burned skin, her sweat-soaked, blood-matted hair. She prays that Alphonse will come back, because she is terrified that Edward will break beyond repair if he doesn’t. 

-

Her prayers are answered. It is heartbreaking to see Alphonse so malnourished, his muscles wasted, his bones jutting out against his skin, but Edward cradles him tight, trying to keep him warm. 

“Is he conscious?” Roy asks, gripping her arm. “Is Fullmetal alright?” 

“Edward is fine. Alphonse looks like he’s sleeping.” Riza tugs at Roy’s coat. “I need to borrow this for Alphonse.” 

Roy slides it off without a word of argument. Riza takes the coat, draping it over Alphonse. “Here.”

Edward looks up at her and smiles, true and joyful and unburdened. It is even more beautiful than she dreamed it would be, down in the depths underneath Central Command. “Thanks, Lieutenant.” 

Riza wants to hug him, but she is worried that if she kneels down, she won’t be able to get up again. She places a gentle hand on Edward’s shoulder instead, and he covers her hand with his right hand. His warm, human, _right_ hand. 

She returns to Roy’s side, vaguely aware that her footsteps are dragging on the ground. Black spots are encroaching into her vision again. Roy frowns, noting the sound. “Lieutenant, are there any field medics nearby? You need treatment.”

“I have to account for the rest of the unit first.” Riza heard what happened to Captain Buccaneer of Fort Briggs. She has seen the bodies that the field medics are covering up with white sheets. Breda, Falman, Fuery, and Rebecca are out here somewhere, in the crowd of soldiers. They have to be. “I have to check on…” 

Her train of thought abandons her. She stumbles, pitching forward, and Roy catches her. “Lieutenant?” he asks, alarm edging into his voice. 

The last thing that Riza hears before she succumbs to unconsciousness is her Colonel calling for help. 

* * *

_to be continued_

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you so much to everybody who left comments and kudos on the previous chapter! I love reading them.
> 
> This chapter was wild to write. A challenge in many ways, both in adapting content from fmab and providing insight into what Riza's state of mind could have been like during an extraordinarily stressful, nightmarish series of events. 
> 
> It was also challenging in the sense that I normally have room to include more non-canon, added scenes, like Riza's conversation with Mrs. Bradley and Roy and Riza's trip to the graveyard last chapter, or Riza and Roy's conversation in chapter thirteen and the scenes where Riza writes her will, her final letters, and reunites with her unit. I didn't have the room to include those added scenes in this chapter, which was a stricter adaptation of canon events. I hope that it wasn't disappointing. 
> 
> A couple of notes--
> 
> It was interesting to write Riza's conflicted feelings toward Roy in the beginning of the chapter, compared to how she feels about him after she is mortally wounded and on the verge of death. Riza's reaction to Roy comforting her during that scene was based on fmab, where they're pretty cuddly with each other and Riza is openly, though subtly, affectionate with Roy (leans against him, smiles at him softly, etc.). More exploration of all of that will come in the next chapter. (It was interesting to note that Riza didn't tell Roy she loved him too, after he confessed to her.) 
> 
> I enjoyed writing about Riza's thoughts at the beginning of the chapter on duality, and how it is encapsulated in so many people in her own life - including herself. 
> 
> I apologize for any disjointedness or failures toward the end with the final action scene. I found the culmination of the Promised Day arc very confusing despite a few rewatches. I wasn't able to delve into the details because of that. 
> 
> From this point, we officially enter the post-canon arc of this story, and I am really excited to write about Riza's life post-fmab. :) The chapter count, as always, is an approximation. I have the main story beats of the post-canon arc planned out, but I have no idea how many chapters that will take or how long those chapters will be. I don't anticipate the post-canon arc to be as long as the pre-canon arc (six chapters). 
> 
> I would love to hear what you thought about this chapter. Comments are deeply appreciated and treasured.
> 
> Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it! I am also on tumblr @lantur if you would like to connect. :)


	18. sixteen

Riza tastes peaches on her lips. 

The taste brings back memories of the annual peach festival in Cecil with Mother. Memories of brunches with Rebecca, two plates of golden-brown waffles on the table between them, topped with peach compote and whipped cream. 

Rebecca. Riza’s heart rate accelerates. She fights to open her eyes. Her eyelids are leaden and gritty and uncooperative. She tries to lift her hand to rub at her eyes, but she can’t seem to do that either. Her arm makes it halfway up before sinking back down to her side. 

“Hold on, Riza.” Rebecca sounds slightly alarmed. “Don’t try and move too much. You’ve been out for more than twenty-four hours. Give me one second and I’ll wipe your eyes for you.”

Gentle hands dab at her eyes with a moistened wipe, scented subtly of peaches. The moisture is just what she needed. Riza opens her eyes and blinks around the room, disoriented. 

Golden evening sunlight streams in through the open windows of her small, private hospital room. Rebecca sits in an armchair pulled close to the bed, dressed in civilian clothes, her hair thrown up into an unusually messy ponytail. Riza notices the pillow and folded blanket tucked at the back of the armchair. 

Her first impulse is to chastise Rebecca for sleeping here. It must have been uncomfortable. But that is drowned out by happiness at seeing her best friend whole and healthy, and Riza holds her arms out. Her left arm, the one that hadn’t responded earlier, is sore and bandaged at the crook of the elbow. It’s likely that she received an intravenous drip. Rebecca must have asked them to remove it before she regained consciousness; her best friend knows about her aversion to needles. 

Rebecca embraces her. She doesn’t hug tight, for once, keeping her grip careful and gentle. Riza buries her face in Rebecca’s dark, curly locks, and Rebecca strokes her hair. “I’m so glad you’re alright. You scared me, Hawkeye.” 

“Sorry.” It hurts to speak.

Rebecca draws back, quickly wiping at her eyes with her sleeve. “Don’t talk if you don’t have to. You went through surgery last evening to fix up your throat, and you got a couple of blood transfusions overnight and earlier today. The doctors said you’ll make a full recovery, but you need to take it easy on your vocal cords for a little while.” Rebecca manages a smile. “We told them that would be fine, since you’re not the chattiest person in the world anyway.”

Riza raises an eyebrow at Rebecca, intending to convey a simple message. _Unlike you._

Rebecca laughs, and Riza gives her a small smile. She notices a pad of paper and a pen on the bedside table, along with a pot of peach-scented lip balm, facial wipes, her hairbrush, and a tall glass of water. She reaches for the pad of paper and the pen and begins to write. Her normally neat script is slightly shaky, but still legible. She writes four words as fast as she can, and then shows the pad to Rebecca.

_Complete status update - please._

“It’s seventeen-hundred hours on April 30,” Rebecca answers, effortlessly transitioning into the brisk, professional manner of a soldier reporting to a superior officer. “Mustang, Ed, and Al are under treatment here at the hospital. They’re all in stable condition. Falman, Breda, Fuery, and President Grumman took no injuries. Breda has been guarding Mustang, and Black Hayate has been with Fuery. There's been no change in Mustang’s status since you last saw him.”

“Civilians?” Riza rubs her throat. A thick ring of bandages encircles her neck. A heartbeat passes, and the rest of Rebecca’s words sink in. " _President_ Grumman?”

Rebecca grimaces. “What do you want me to answer first?”

“Civilians,” Riza whispers. 

Rebecca shifts in her seat, and her shoulders sag. “Most everyone came out from the transmutation circle okay, when it was reversed. Except the very elderly, the frail, and people with serious health problems. People with diagnosed or undiagnosed heart conditions, people in comas, that sort of thing. The shock was too much for them to handle. Whole nursing homes and apartment complexes for the elderly got… cleared out. A ton of patients here in the hospital died, too. People who were pretty debilitated from major surgery or other injuries.” She presses her fingers to her temples. “The issue we’ve been dealing with is the people who lived in regular houses or apartments. We have to find the people who died, before… you know. The weather’s been getting warmer.”

Riza stares out the window, unable to take in the mental images evoked by Rebecca’s words. The elderly or ill collapsing to the ground when Father invoked the nationwide transmutation circle, never to rise again. Many must have died alone, confused, and in pain, as their souls were ripped away from their bodies. 

A potent mix of grief and rage surges within her. Riza closes her eyes, trying to hold on to her composure. Edward defeated Father. But so many Amestrians are still gone. They paid the ultimate price for Father’s delusions of grandeur.

Riza can’t bear to hear the answer, but she has to ask. “How many?” 

“We’re not sure yet.” Rebecca rubs her upper arms, as though trying to warm herself. “Reports are pouring in from around the country. It’ll take a while to count up the full number. We’re at almost eight hundred deaths in Central. Similar numbers are coming in from East City, West City, and South City. That’s the metro areas alone, not the outlying regions.” 

Riza bites her lip so hard the skin almost breaks. She nods once. What, if anything, can be done to compensate the families of those who were lost? Financial compensation provided by the government seems shallow. What price can be put on human lives? There is no other alternative, though - at least, not one that she can think of right now. She will need to discuss this with her Colonel. Or the new Fuhrer-President. 

Rebecca hands her the glass of water. “Take small sips of this. Sorry, but the doctors said that you won’t be able to have tea or anything hot for a while.”

A hot cup of tea would be a comfort, in more ways than one. The cool water helps alleviate her parched mouth nevertheless. Her throat aches with every swallow, but it isn’t even comparable to the pain she suffered immediately after being injured. Riza sets the empty glass on the table, already feeling more human and more like herself after the drink. “How is Grumman the new Fuhrer-President?” She normally abides by medical advice, but this conversation is too urgent to have through writing.

“I have no idea,” Rebecca replies, her brows drawing together. “Honestly. He and Mustang had a long meeting after you were done with surgery. Grumman came out and told me that it was decided that he would be the new Fuhrer-President. He wasn’t exactly forthcoming when I asked him for details.” 

Riza exhales, thinking back to her conversation with Roy the night before the Promised Day. _If anything happens to me tomorrow, I know that Armstrong or Grumman - perhaps both - are going to try to establish themselves as the new Fuhrer. I need you to know that I do not support this. If I die, my order is that you serve in my place as the Fuhrer-President of Amestris._

Clearly, something had changed. Even after - what happened between them in the tunnels - she doesn’t think that her Colonel would have withdrawn his support for her. Besides, his blindness doesn’t make him unfit to hold the office of the President. Surely Roy would have understood that. 

Riza glances at the door, trying to figure out whether she is strong enough to seek an audience with Grumman and Roy. The headache that plagued her earlier has vanished, and her vision has regained its former acuity. The blood transfusions served their purpose. The heart rate monitor she is connected to indicates that her pulse is steady and strong.

Her skin is clammy, though, and her teeth need to be brushed. Her hair, though lying neatly brushed over her shoulders, is lank and sweaty. Someone had wiped the blood free of her hair, at least, and scrubbed it from her face, neck, and chest. “Am I clear to get up?” Riza touches the bandages around her neck gingerly. “And how can I shower without messing up this thing?”

“You’re fine to get up and shower, but they’re going to want to wrap those bandages up before you do. I brought your soap and shampoo from your place, by the way, and some fresh clothes. Hospital products are murder on your skin and hair.” Rebecca shudders. 

The nurse that Rebecca calls to the room performs a check of Riza’s vitals, finally deeming it safe for her to engage in very light activity. “Don’t bathe in hot water, and keep your shower under ten minutes,” the nurse cautions, wrapping her neck in several layers of waterproof dressing. “We don’t want you getting lightheaded and collapsing.” 

“I’ll stay out here. Yell if you need me.” Rebecca settles herself in the armchair. “I’ll give you ten, and then I’m going to have to call Mustang and Grumman to tell them that you’re up. They’re probably going to kill me as it is for not getting them the second that you regained consciousness.” 

“I won’t let them be too hard on you.” The nurse gives her a reproving look, and Riza writes the rest of her message out on the pad of paper. _I needed you to give me an update on the situation._

Rebecca draws a smiley face beneath her message.

Riza takes an armful of clothing, bath products, and her toothbrush and toothpaste into the bathroom, resting them precariously on the corner of the sink. Rebecca brought her favorite pink sweater and dark blue pajama pants, soft slippers, and a clean bra and underwear. It will be a relief to be more fully dressed. She feels strangely exposed and vulnerable in this hospital gown, secured only by flimsy ties at the sides. 

The knowledge that someone undressed her and put her into this leaves a prickling sense of discomfort crawling over her skin. Even medical professionals look askance at her back. The first time her new physician in Central City saw it, she gaped for several seconds, unable to conceal her shock. Once she finally recovered, she asked a few uncomfortable questions. 

Normally, Riza finds a modicum of peace in the shower. She savors the warmth of the water and the sound of it cascading against the floor, breathes in the aroma of her soap and shampoo, and enjoys giving herself a scalp massage while she rinses her hair. 

There is no such peace today. Riza pours shampoo into her hands and she remembers watching, incapable of interceding, as Wrath and Pride forced Roy to perform human transmutation. She works the shampoo into her hair with erratic movements, shaking like a leaf.

Riza forces the thoughts away. She scrubs herself from toe to head with the thick bar of lavender-scented soap, and blinks down at the large hand-shaped bruises on her arms. These had been left by the Fuhrer candidate who restrained her, pinning her arms behind her back with brutal force. Rendering her helpless to resist as he slit her throat.

Riza stares at her hands, covered in faint purple lather from the soap. She blinks and her hands are slick with her own blood. A tiny cry escapes her, and she presses her hands over her own mouth, her shoulders heaving. She doesn’t want to scare Rebecca. 

She rests her forehead against the damp tile and takes several slow, deep breaths, seeking to ground herself. She is aboveground, far from the tunnels and the stone chamber where she nearly died. The sun is shining outside. Most of Amestris has been saved. Her Colonel and her friends are safe. The Fuhrer candidates are dead. Wrath is dead. The doctor with the gold tooth is dead. Envy is dead. Pride is surely dead too, just like the other homunculi. It is all over.

It doesn’t _feel_ over. The battle rages on within her. The all-consuming desperation and fear and helplessness and anger. The adrenaline that flooded her system when she and Roy confronted Envy, when she faced off against her own Colonel, and finally, when they had fought for their lives against the doctor and his candidates. The intensity of the emotions that burned through her in the tunnels underneath Central left their own scars, just as pronounced as the burned skin mottling her back.

Riza hugs herself, standing with her head bowed, letting the pressure of the water wash the shampoo clean of her hair. She knows, with weary, awful certainty, that there will be a new set of nightmares to haunt her in the years to come. 

She wipes the tears from her cheeks and finally summons the resolve to turn the shower off, towel herself dry, and dress. Riza faces herself in the mirror as she dries her hair with the small hair dryer mounted to the wall. Even after the blood transfusions, her skin is wan and pale, and there are dark shadows under her eyes.

She opens the door, stepping back into her hospital room. Grumman stands by the window, arms folded behind his back. Rebecca is nowhere to be seen. 

Grumman startles at the sound of the door opening. He turns toward her, and his face lights up with genuine joy. He strides over to her, enfolding her in his arms. For just a moment, Riza allows herself to forget the dozen questions she has to ask him, about how and why he seized the presidency from her Colonel. She leans against him, and for just a moment, she allows herself to be a granddaughter reunited with her grandfather after a long separation.

They pull apart, and Grumman pats her shoulder. His hand trembles. “My dear, I can’t tell you how relieved I am to see you well. You gave me quite a fright.”

“I missed you too, Grandfather.” Riza pauses significantly. “Fuhrer-President, I should say.”

Grumman sighs, picking up on the censure in her tone. He takes her arm, indicating that they should sit. Riza takes a seat on the edge of her hospital bed, and Grumman perches on the armchair. “I popped in to check on you and Catalina told me you were up, so I sent her to get some dinner for herself.” He taps his fingers on the armrest in the way he does when he is ill at ease. “She’s been by your side since they brought you in.” 

“She’s a good friend,” Riza says evenly. “Genuine, caring, and honest.”

Grumman fidgets. “Riza,” he starts, placating. 

Riza shakes her head, stung by the betrayal that wells up within her. She has always expected duplicitous, snake-like behavior from other high-ranking military officials. But never from Grumman. Never from her own family. “When did you decide that you wanted to take the presidency from the Colonel, sir?” she snaps. “Was it before or after you promised to give him - give _us -_ your support?”

“It’s not that simple, dear.” Grumman pinches the bridge of his nose. He sneaks a glance at her. When Riza continues to regard him coldly, unmoved, he sinks down an inch in his chair. 

“You could have told me,” she says. “About your intentions. I was completely blindsided by you, sir. I feel betrayed. It’s an unpleasant feeling, and one that I never expected to associate with you.” 

“And if I had told you?” Grumman flings his hands up in the air. “You would have never supported me. This confrontation would have just come a few years sooner. I didn’t want to alienate you before I had to.” 

Riza’s temper rises. “Yes, but at least I would have known where we stood. The Colonel and I have never kept our ambitions or intentions from you. We believed that you trusted us as much as we trusted you.”

Grumman stands and paces back and forth along the length of her hospital bed. “I never intended to hurt you. Please believe that.” 

Riza remains silent. Grumman runs a hand through the sparse hair at the side of his head. “Mustang was the son I always wanted,” he says succinctly. “And I did support him, for years. Genuinely. Wholeheartedly. Until he told me about that crackpot idea of his, about making soldiers who served in Ishval stand trial for what they did there.”

Riza glares at him. “I fully support him in that.” 

Grumman’s reply is immediate and vehement. “You’re both wrong. The idea is dangerously idealistic and radical.” 

“Far from it, sir. It is entirely reasonable,” Riza retorts. “Soldiers should be held to the same moral and ethical standards as other Amestrian citizens. Would you be so opposed to the idea, if I wasn’t one of those soldiers?” 

Grumman makes a small, impatient sound, and his eyes flash, behind his glasses. “That is entirely besides the point.” 

Riza crosses her arms. “I’ve noticed that the Colonel has the habit of mixing the personal with the professional. Now I see where he gets that from.”

“You can say what you want about me, Riza. You can feel what you want about me. I knew how you would react to my plan.” Grumman lifts his chin, and she sees a shadow of the intimidating military commander he must have been, decades ago. “But I was not going to allow Mustang to take the Presidency and put my granddaughter to death. I told him I never wanted to live to see that day. I meant it.”

Riza bites back her frustration at the gross oversimplification of her Colonel’s plan. “He would have done everything in his power to protect his subordinates.”

Grumman waves the objection away, annoyed. “The decision would have been in the jury’s hands, not his. It was a chance I wasn’t willing to take. Besides, the more I thought about it, the more I came to see that I would be a better candidate than Mustang. Free of the corruption of the existing government, and willing to implement changes for the betterment of Amestris - but without Mustang’s radical nature. He’s _thirty_ ,” Grumman presses. “He’s young, inexperienced, and hotheaded.”

Riza holds firm to her point. “The Colonel is one of the most intelligent men I know.”

“That’s true.” Grumman’s agreement is a surprise. “But some maturity and wisdom, the kind that only comes with time, will work in his favor.”

Riza frowns. “What do you mean by that, sir?” 

“I’m saying that I won’t serve forever. I’m no spring chicken, you know,” Grumman points out, somewhat ruefully. “I’ll step down in four or five years. That should give Mustang plenty of time to become accustomed to his new situation, don’t you think? Hopefully he matures in those years, and sees that his ideas about trials and retribution are rash and ill-advised. He’s always talking about moving forward. Well, the best way for Amestris and Ishval to move forward is to refrain from reopening those old wounds.” 

Riza considers his words. “You’re keeping the door open to appoint Roy as the next Fuhrer-President. Or, at least, you're saying you are.”

Grumman raises his eyebrows, and Riza immediately regrets her lapse. “Riza,” he says, a hint of a smile playing around his lips. “Is there something you want to tell me?”

“President Grumman.” 

Grumman winces at the reprimand in her tone. “When I step down, I intend to appoint either _Roy_ or Major General Armstrong, depending on which of their visions for the future of Amestris align more closely with mine. I let Mustang know about this, and he was amenable.”

Riza takes it in, processing all of this new information, and Grumman clears his throat. “Mustang told me about the order he gave you, before the Promised Day. His intention was that if he fell in battle, you should serve in his stead as the next President of Amestris.”

“Yes, sir,” Riza replies warily.

“I love and respect you, my dear. You’re a clever young woman, with a caring heart.” Grumman hesitates. “You also have the same outrageously radical ideas as Mustang. For that reason, I can’t support you taking the presidency.”

Riza folds her hands in her lap. “I expected as much from you, sir.”

“Please don’t see this as naked ambition and opportunism on my part.” Grumman begins pacing again, his agitation evident. “I’m not - I’m not _stabbing my own granddaughter in the back,_ as Mustang so eloquently put it. If you shared my political ideals, I would be happy to cede the office to you here and now.” 

Riza inspects him, assessing his body language, searching for any signs of untruth. “I believe you,” she says at last, and she means it.

Grumman visibly relaxes. “If you tell me you’ll try Bradley’s high command, and _only_ Bradley’s high command, for the war crimes committed in Ishval, I’ll give it to you.”

He offers her the presidency of their nation with the same casual air that he once offered to buy her a puppy. Riza doesn’t even consider it. “I can’t make that promise to you, sir. I’ll continue to serve alongside my Colonel in our current capacity.” She sits up straighter. “What will that capacity be?”

The question is a challenge. As far as she knows, there is no precedent for a blind soldier continuing to serve. However, a medical discharge is out of the question. Riza has never once taken advantage of her familial relationship to Grumman, as a Lieutenant General and now the Fuhrer-President of Amestris. She had never intended to do so. However, keeping Roy in a position of power and influence in the military would be the one reason she would compromise that principle. 

“Mustang is a lucky man, to have you to fight so loyally for him,” Grumman observes. “I spoke to him in detail about this. One of his terms for allowing me to take the Presidency without a fight was that I lend full policy and financial support to the complete restoration of the Ishvalan region. This would culminate in an Ishvalan nation independent of Amestris. Mustang wants his unit to deploy to Ishval by the end of summer in order to lead the restoration efforts.” 

Riza nods, satisfied. “That’s good, sir. I’ll accompany my unit to Ishval.”

“So it’ll be goodbye, again.” Grumman stops pacing, and sinks down on the armchair across from her, bracing his elbows on his knees.

His posture, the sudden weariness in his demeanor, is a reminder that her grandfather turned seventy last month. Grumman is so lively and sprightly that she forgets his age. The truth is, he is old to be taking the reigns of a nation. As experienced a leader as he is, being the Fuhrer-President of Amestris will be a challenge unlike any he has faced before. It will bring untold amounts of stress.

“For a time,” Riza replies. “Yes.”

Grumman looks up at her briefly. He pulls out the handkerchief he always keeps in his pocket and folds it, shakes it out, and then re-folds it. “I’ll be moving into the presidential estate soon. I should be settled by mid-May. If you would like to join me for dinner...”

He trails off, letting the question hang in the air between them. Riza takes pity on him, and reaches out, taking his hand in her own. As vehemently as she disagrees with what he has done and why he has done it, she isn’t ready to turn her back on him. He is still her family. “I would enjoy that, Grandfather.”

“Good.” Grumman squeezes her hand between both of his own, obviously relieved. “Very good. You can bring Mustang with you, too, if he doesn’t find the idea of seeing me too offensive. Oh, and Riza?”

“Yes, sir?” Rebecca had refilled her glass of water before leaving, in one of her typical, thoughtful gestures. Riza takes a sip. Her throat is raw from talking. 

Grumman smiles at her, and some of the old twinkle returns to his eyes. “You’ll have to get used to calling Mustang by his new rank. He’s had an extra day to practice thinking of you as Captain Hawkeye.”

Riza splutters on her water. “What?”

“I elevated him to Brigadier General. He insisted that his entire unit be elevated one rank as well. Two ranks for Kain Fuery, considering his bravery on the front lines in the South.” Grumman hands her his handkerchief. “Mustang asked for a three-rank promotion for you, actually, an advancement to Lieutenant Colonel. I would have liked to indulge you, my dear, but we do have to avoid the appearance of favoritism. I did let the cat out of the bag about our relationship last autumn while speaking to Bradley, and I’m sure the news has spread. My apologies for that. I thought the connection would protect you.”

Riza shakes her head, dazed. “Your intentions in revealing the truth were good, sir. And I’m fine as I am.” _Captain Hawkeye._ The new rank sounds foreign to her. She can’t quite wrap her mind around it. 

“The salary increase is well deserved.” Grumman twiddles his thumbs innocently. “And perhaps you can use your extra time off to pay a visit to your grandfather in Central City.” 

“Or she can come with me on another trip to Creta, since it’s been years since our last vacation.” Rebecca enters the room, holding a tray loaded up with a bowl of thick, creamy tomato soup, a couple of cups of chocolate pudding, and one cup of soft, canned peaches. She has an unusually harried expression on her face. “I cleared this with the nurses’ station, Riza. All of this is safe for you to swallow. The soup is room-temperature, though.” 

Riza’s mouth still waters at the sight of the food, as Rebecca sets the tray down on her lap. It’s been close to forty-eight hours since she last ate. “Thanks, Becca. I’d eat anything right now.”

Grumman checks his wristwatch. “I need to report back to Central Command. I’ll check in on you tomorrow. First Lieutenant Catalina, you’re off leave now. I need you to join me at Central Command at nineteen-hundred hours.”

Rebecca salutes him. “Yes, sir.” 

Riza waves at him, her mouth full of soup. Grumman hugs her around the shoulders and then departs, hands in his pockets, whistling a cheerful tune.

Riza swallows, and takes a sip of her water. “Tell me that he has guards. He’s the Fuhrer-President now. He can’t just go wandering around as he pleases anymore, even in his strange disguises.”

“Weir and Abbott were waiting outside, and they go everywhere with him now,” Rebecca hastens to assure her, sitting beside her on the bed. “The two of them trade off with Varley and Harp. They’re all solid. Don’t worry.”

“Thanks.” Riza gulps down more of her soup, before nudging her friend in the side. “Congratulations on the promotion, by the way.”

“You too, Captain!” Rebecca beams. “He made me promise not to say anything to you. He wanted to be the one to break the news.”

“That sounds like him,” Riza says dryly. “Is everything okay otherwise? You looked a little stressed when you came back in.” 

“That unit of yours caught me passing by Mustang’s room with a tray of food. It was my fault. I should have known that would happen. Mustang got a little snappish that I didn’t notify them as soon as you woke up.” Rebecca falters. “Maybe I should have. I know how worried they were. But I just wanted to give you some time to take care of yourself and talk to the old man and I first. Was that all right?”

“Yes,” Riza says, without hesitating. As much as she wants to see the rest of her unit, she needed to clear the air with Grumman first. “I’m sorry the Colonel - the General gave you a hard time.” 

“No problem. He’s just acting like your overprotective boyfriend, as usual.” Rebecca sniffs. “He requested that you be moved into his room, by the way. The nurses wouldn’t clear it without your agreement, because men and women don’t normally share rooms. Grumman and I thought you’d be fine with it, but we wanted to check with you first.”

“Oh,” Riza replies, taken aback. It makes sense for her to be near Roy, to guard him and assist him, especially considering his current circumstances. She should have thought of that herself. That had been an egregious oversight. “Yes. That works.”

Rebecca raises an eyebrow at her. Riza shrinks back a little against her pillows, slightly defensive. “What?”

“I’m just surprised.” Rebecca fluffs up the pillow and does not make eye contact with her. “You normally go a little insane when you’re forced to even be across the room from Mustang. I thought that the first thing you would do when you woke up was demand to be near him. Especially considering his situation, you know, with the whole blindness thing. And you’ve barely even mentioned him since you got up.”

There is a lot to unpack there. “I do not go _a little insane_ when I have to be across the room from him,” Riza protests. 

“I beg to differ.” Rebecca pokes her on the shoulder. “Anyway, don’t change the subject. Did something happen between you two?” 

Riza’s first instinct is to say that nothing happened. That would be the easier course of action. But while there are things about her past she has kept from Rebecca, she has never outright lied. Especially not about Roy. She doesn’t even know where to begin with this, though.

“We kissed, on the night before the Promised Day.” Riza plucks at a loose thread on the thin hospital blanket. “And we had a falling out, an hour or so before the final battle.” 

The words come out quiet and almost weak. They are a massive understatement. They don’t do justice to anything that happened in the tunnels underneath Central. To the way she and Roy clung to one another and poured every bit of long-repressed devotion, adoration, and passion into that kiss. To the way they kissed in the car, savoring their closeness, unable and unwilling to tear themselves away from each other until they had to. 

They don’t do justice to Roy’s fury when he ordered her to stand down and allow him to torture Envy to death. To the way he glared at her like she was nothing more to him than an obstacle in his path. Her words don’t encompass how he seethed at her, hand raised, ready to strike, lightning crackling between his fingers. They don’t capture her shock and fear.

They don’t convey the enormity of the fact that Roy had been reacting to her (his Lieutenant, his best friend, the woman he loved) raising a gun to his head in an overt threat. Threatening to put him down like a dog gone rabid. Riza’s stomach turns, and she sets down her spoon. She had reacted with terror and disbelief to Roy threatening her. But she threatened him first. He must have felt just as betrayed as she did. 

“Finally,” Rebecca mutters, leaning over to double-check that the door to the room is closed. “And you fought? I mean, you two have had your arguments before, right? Like when he recruited Ed onto the unit? And when he told you to stop second-guessing his decisions and act like you supported him?” 

“It wasn’t like that.” Riza’s throat aches, and she massages it. Maybe it is just due to her physical and emotional reserves being low, but it feels like the floodgates have been opened. Now that she has opened up, she doesn’t want to stop, even though it would be prudent to do so. “It got - heated.” 

“So you guys said some things you didn’t want to say?” Rebecca pats her on the arm. “It happens.” 

“It’s not that.” Riza looks down at her tray, unable to meet her best friend’s gaze. It seems like the ultimate act of disloyalty to Roy to disclose this. At the same time, she can’t keep this secret, and process the enormity of it, on her own. There is already so much that she has kept to herself, locked away inside her, over the years. “It got physical. Or… it almost did.” 

The color starts to drain from Rebecca’s face. “Did he hit you?”

“No.” Riza takes her hand and squeezes it, trying to convey her honesty. She has to admit the rest, as agonizing and ugly a truth as it is, for her own sake. “But I think he might have struck out with his alchemy, if Edward hadn’t interrupted him just then. It wasn’t unprovoked, Becca. I had my gun to his head. He was doing something unacceptable, and I had to stop him. But he didn’t listen to my order to stand down. He ordered me to stand down instead, he was angry that I refused, and--” Riza falls silent. Recounting those terrible minutes in the tunnels is as almost as painful as living through them the first time. “The situation spiraled out of control.” 

“What the fuck,” Rebecca stammers. “What the _fuck._ " She stands, pacing in a tight circle. 

“He apologized.” Riza knows, as she says them, how weak the words sound. “Scar, Edward, and I talked him down. He apologized to all of us. To me. He tried to protect me during the battle that followed, the one where I was injured.”

Rebecca sits down heavily at the foot of the bed. “You can’t seriously be rationalizing what happened,” she replies, in a harsh whisper. “He’s the Flame Alchemist. He could have seriously hurt you.”

“He wouldn’t have.” Riza’s eyes sting. “He would have just thrown some lightning at me, trying to get me to drop my gun. Besides, Edward showed up before anything happened.” 

“Ed might have saved your life.” Rebecca shivers, tugging one of the blankets folded at the foot of the bed over her lap. “Riza, do you really want to get in deeper with him after that? What happens the next time he loses his temper? Aren’t you afraid of him?”

(The same dark questions have haunted her, lingering in the recesses of her mind.)

“Becca,” Riza interrupts. She blinks hard. “He told me he loved me.” 

Rebecca goes very still. 

“During the fight, after I was wounded. He held me, and he told me he loved me.” Riza swipes the tears from her eyes in a quick, self-conscious movement. “As angry I still am at him for putting both of us in that situation with Envy - I can’t dismiss that. When I saw what Bradley did to him, I thought that it would kill me, too. I love him. I’ve loved him for seven years. There’s a small part of him that scares me, but I can deal with that. The rest of him is decent, kind, and good.”

Rebecca rakes her fingers through her hair. “Riza, no.”

“I have wanted to be loved,” Riza confesses, and her voice has never come out so small, so vulnerable, “the way that he loves me, for my entire life.” 

“You are loved.” Rebecca sounds close to tears. She moves closer, and takes Riza’s hand. “I know that you’ve looked for it in places that haven’t been - the best. With the whole thing with Reid, and with--” She stops dead, unable to continue. 

Riza pulls away, panic spiking in her. “What?” 

“Back in the Academy.” Rebecca won’t look at her. She doesn’t have to say anything further. 

Riza’s lips go numb as the horror starts to set in. There had been seventy cadets in her cadet class. Had they all known? Had her reputation been tainted, even before the rumors about her and Roy? “Was it that obvious?”

“No,” Rebecca says hurriedly. “No. It wouldn’t have been, to anyone who didn’t know you like I did.”

Shame blossoms inside her, vivid and hot. Riza buries her head in her hands. “You must think I’m some kind of--”

Rebecca doesn’t let her finish the sentence. “No.” She rubs Riza’s back, trying to soothe her. “I think that you were hurting and you wanted to feel loved. You’re not the one I judged.” 

Riza leans her forehead against Rebecca’s shoulder. “Thank you, for not condemning me.”

“Riza.” Rebecca taps her on the shoulder, making her look into her eyes. “I understand you want to be loved. But don’t you think it might be a good idea to start fresh? With someone who isn’t Mustang, or Reid, or Bresler, or anyone like them? A nice veterinarian or a doctor, or someone like that? You’re smart and sweet and beautiful, and I’m sure there are dozens of men who could be the one to give you the love you want. This is all…” Rebecca shrugs helplessly. “I don’t say this to hurt you, sweetheart, really. But it’s all been so fucked up.”

Riza tries not to flinch. She knows, in the privacy of her own mind, that it is true. Hearing it spoken so bluntly is another matter entirely. 

“It doesn’t have to be like that,” Rebecca says. “It could be normal, and safe, and healthy. It could be something that you don’t have to hide. Something that doesn’t make you feel so bad. With someone who isn’t so intense. Who you don’t have to keep in line.”

The words give her pause. Riza has never really considered that before. Never seriously imagined herself with anyone besides Roy. In the years since graduating the Academy and moving to East City, the only man she’s ever had anything even approaching a relationship with has been Reid. 

(If sleeping together every time work puts them in the same city counts as relationship-adjacent. Riza is not sure it does. Still, Reid tried to coax her into accepting a transfer to South City to serve on his unit. She flat-out refused, telling him she couldn’t leave her Colonel.

Later that night, as they curled against one another to sleep, Riza closed her eyes and thought that if there could ever be anyone else but Roy, it would be Reid. The thought filled her with melancholy. It would still be a violation of the anti-fraternization laws. It would still be illicit. He would still be her commanding officer, her Lieutenant Colonel. It would be the same situation she was in with Roy, except Reid actually wanted her.

Riza had pressed her flushed face against the pillow as she thought of her interest in Reid, in Bresler, in Roy, all of them higher-ranking than her, in a position of power over her, all of them older than her. Shame pricked at her. _Is there something wrong with me?_ she wondered, and the thought kept her up for more than an hour.)

Because it is Rebecca who asked, Riza tries to contemplate it, now. She tries to imagine dating someone, loving someone, who isn’t Roy. Some civilian. Someone normal. Someone who isn’t so “intense,” as Rebecca had put it. (Someone she doesn’t have to keep in line. Someone who has no danger lurking within him. Someone who couldn’t kill or torture with a mere snap of his fingers.) Someone who has never even touched a gun, let alone killed a man, or hundreds of them. Someone kind and thoughtful and soft-spoken, who likes to read and loves animals. 

Riza tries to imagine coming home to him every day, and walking their dogs together in the park. She tries to imagine cuddling up beside him on the sofa at night as they talk into the late hours. She tries to imagine kissing him, winding her arms around his shoulders, letting him lift her into his arms and carry her to their bedroom.

“I can’t,” Riza murmurs, feeling unusually defeated. “No one knows me, no one understands me, like the Colonel does.” 

“You two have a history,” Rebecca allows. “But you could let someone know you, and understand you.” 

“How?” Riza asks. The question comes out sharper, more bitter, than she intended. “I can’t imagine facing someone else, someone normal, and telling them about my past. About Ishval, and even the years before Ishval, with my father. It took me years to open up to even you about it.”

Rebecca doesn’t say anything. She just looks at her, quiet and empathetic. 

Riza realizes she is gripping the blankets with white-knuckled fists. It takes an effort to relax her grip. “The Colonel knows me and understands me like no one else. He understands my past, my present, and my goals for the future. He knows why it all matters so much to me. He understands the best and the worst of me, just as I see the best and worst of him.”

“I can’t even imagine having the same bond with a man that you have with him.” Rebecca shakes her head. Her next words are soft. “But if you’re going to move forward with things - continuing to work with him, or, well, more than that - please be careful, okay?”

“I will.” Riza tucks a stray lock of hair behind her ear, sitting up straighter in bed. “I’m not a doormat. I won’t tolerate a repeat of what happened in the tunnels.” She pauses, remembering Roy’s words to Bradley. _I have people by my side who will stop me from being reckless, and keep me on the right path._ “I don’t believe that will happen again. If it does, I’ll react accordingly.”

“Okay.” Rebecca studies her. “And I’m always here for you, if you ever want to talk about anything. No matter what.”

“I know.” Riza tries to smile. “Thank you for looking out for me.” 

“Always,” Rebecca says. “Always.”

-

Rebecca packs her things into her military-issue canvas bag, and Riza gets clearance from the charge nurse on the ward to move down the hall into her Colonel’s - her General’s - room. “General Mustang’s room is five doors down, and to your right,” the nurse informs her, after a final check of her vitals. “Are you sure you don’t need any assistance, Captain?”

“That’s what I’m here for.” Rebecca slings the canvas bag over her shoulder with a cheerful grin. “Thanks, Cora.”

The nurse points them in the right direction. It’s a short walk, but Riza’s muscles are stiff and achy after just over twenty-four hours of disuse, her gait slower than typical. She thinks, with a pang, of the discomfort Alphonse must be enduring. Rebuilding those wasted, atrophied muscles will take time and rigorous physical therapy. She hadn’t been able to get a proper look at Edward’s restored arm and leg, but hopefully the muscles had been healthy and strong. 

“I’d like to visit Edward and Alphonse tomorrow,” she says. “Are they on this hallway too?”

“They’re upstairs, in the rehabilitation wing,” Rebecca replies. “I’ll stop by there after I get you settled. They’ve been asking about you.” 

Riza knocks on the General’s door, using the unit’s coded knock. She hears muffled, indistinct voices coming from inside. It sounds like Roy, Falman, Fuery, and Breda are all present. 

Fuery flings open the door and beams when he sees her, giving her a sharp salute. “Good evening, Captain Hawkeye!” 

Riza smiles at him. “Thank you, Second Lieutenant Fuery.”

She and Rebecca step into the double room, which is littered with boxes of books and dusty files. Breda and Falman stand, saluting her. Their faces positively shine with relief, just like Fuery’s. “Captain,” they say, in unison. 

Roy stands near the window, gripping the back of a chair for support. He turns in the direction of her footsteps, and smiles softly. The misty gray cast that had settled over his dark eyes is still a shock. “Welcome back, Captain.” 

“Thank you, General.” Riza gives Falman, Fuery, and Breda quick embraces, and stops awkwardly next to the General. “I’m so happy that the three of you are okay.” 

“We’re glad _you’re_ okay,” Breda corrects. “Things haven’t been the same around here without you.”

Falman withdraws two of her favorite guns from his pockets, her twin nine-millimeter Kolibris, and hands them to her. “I thought you would be missing these, Captain.”

Riza takes her weapons gratefully. She hasn’t been unarmed for such a long stretch of time since before she enlisted in the military academy. “Thanks. I felt off balance without them.”

“That’s just for your peace of mind, though,” Breda adds. “I’m fine to keep guarding the General. You should focus on getting back to one-hundred percent.”

“I could smuggle Black Hayate in tomorrow,” Fuery offers. “I’m sure that seeing him will help you feel better. He misses you, too.”

“That would be perfect.” Riza’s arms ache with how much she wants to hug her dog. “Perhaps we can take him to see Alphonse as well.”

Rebecca checks her wristwatch and then yelps. “Riza, are you going to be okay here? I need to run down to Command to meet up with the old man. It’s almost nineteen-hundred hours.”

“I’m fine,” Riza reassures her. “You have my apartment keys. Go and get some rest after you’re done with whatever work Grumman needs. There’s leftover chicken pot pie in the fridge that should still be good.”

“Thanks, but I think I’m going to make him put me up in a nice penthouse suite at The Langham.” Rebecca smirks. “Only the best for the aide to the President, right?” 

Riza laughs. “You deserve it, Becca.”

Rebecca waves to them and dashes off. “Maybe we should go too,” Fuery suggests, his voice coming out at a slightly higher pitch than usual, as he inches toward the door. “I’m sure that General Mustang and Captain Hawkeye would like to catch up.”

Falman agrees with alacrity, following Fuery. “Yes, of course. General, Captain, I will report back at eight-hundred hours tomorrow. General, I will bring those books that you requested from the library.” 

Breda glances down at his own watch. “Yeah, it’s not too late for dinner. I think I’ll call Maria and see if she can come down to the cafeteria here.”

“Maria?” Riza asks innocently. “Maria Ross?”

Breda turns red. “Second Lieutenant Ross,” he amends. 

“I can think of some better places for a date,” Roy comments, amused. “Take the car keys from my coat pocket, and take her out to Spoon and Stable downtown.”

“It’s not a date!” Breda protests, and beats a hasty retreat to the door, closing it behind him.

Riza almost laughs. Then she turns back to her General, the smile fading from her face. It is strange to see him out of his uniform and his typical formal clothes, wearing the pale blue hospital clothing - loose pants and sleeveless top - provided by the staff here. 

In an unguarded moment, years ago, Riza had commented to him that he always looked impeccable. _My aunt taught me that clothing is armor,_ Roy said to her, in reply. _The finer it is, the more respect people will give you._ Then he coughed. _You always look nice too, Hawkeye. Very put-together and professional._

The lack of his layers, his white button-down shirt, dark blue uniform coat, and black overcoat, makes Roy look smaller, somehow, and more vulnerable. His hair is messy, like he’s been running his fingers through it in thought. Riza notes the bandages wound around his hands. The sight, and the memory of Wrath’s swords stabbing him clean through both palms, makes her shoulders stiffen. The pain must have been excruciating. Even after having his hands mangled, he still fought alongside their forces, snapping his fingers over and over again to strike out against Father. Every _snap_ would have hurt. 

“General.” Riza reaches out tentatively, and then stills. She would have taken this small liberty without asking two days ago, but she will have to modify her behavior. She can’t imagine how vulnerable, how defenseless, she would feel if she were suddenly unable to see. She doesn’t want to startle him. “May I put my hand on your arm?” 

“Yes, Captain.” Roy’s voice catches in his throat. “You may.”

Riza rests her hand on his arm, for just an instant. “How are you?” 

Roy looks a little lost when she withdraws the touch. He crosses his arms over his chest, as if trying to guard himself. “Well, I lost my vision to Truth, and then I lost the Presidency to my mentor. But Fullmetal, Scar, and Hohenheim saved Amestris, and Mei Chang and the doctors here saved you. My men came out of the battle uninjured. So I’m fine,” he says simply. “I have everything I need to move forward from here.”

Roy’s tone lacks the bitterness, the anger, she expected. Riza blinks at him, before belatedly remembering that he can’t see and respond to her facial expressions any longer. “You sound very matter-of-fact about it all, sir.” She allows herself to show some of her surprise in her voice, instead of keeping her words as even as she normally does. 

“I’ve had more than twenty-four hours to think about things.” Roy shrugs slightly. “The other losses are acceptable, compared to what I might have lost.”

His words make her chest tighten. “General…”

Roy looks away from her, and she can tell that he is embarrassed. “Do you want to sit?” he asks. “You shouldn’t exert yourself too much. How are you feeling?”

“My throat is a little sore, but otherwise, I’m all right.” Riza looks between the hospital beds and the couple of chairs in the room, judging their positions in relation to where she and Roy are standing near the window. She remembers, from her visit to the Central City Veterans Home last winter, how a few of the blind residents used white canes to help them navigate their environment. There are no mobility aids of the sort in Roy’s room. 

Riza touches the back of his hand with hers. It is an innocuous touch, compared to some of the other things they’ve done recently, but the light contact sends a jolt through her. “You can take my arm, just above my elbow.” 

Roy skims his hand up her arm until he reaches her elbow, and then he curls his fingers around her arm. Riza is grateful that she thought to pull on her pink sweater. That should hide her goosebumps. She holds her arm relaxed and by her side, and carefully leads Roy over to his bed. He remains about half a step behind her. To Riza’s surprise, he smiles, small and wry, as he settles down on the bed. 

“What?” she asks. It might be more appropriate for her to sit in the chair beside the bed, but she sits beside him, their arms barely brushing.

“I’m the one following you, now,” Roy points out. 

The irony of that had struck her, too. Riza swallows over the lump in her throat. “I’m here to guide you, sir.”

“Thank you, Captain.” Roy sighs. “It’s more than I deserve.”

There it is. It has remained unspoken, unacknowledged, since Envy perished in the tunnels. Since Roy said _please forgive me,_ and sunk to his knees before her. Since she said nothing to him in return, and rejected his outstretched hand and the offer to help her to her feet. She kept silent, refusing to speak to him until their encounter with the doctor and the Fuhrer candidates. 

And after that, for a time, the conflict in the tunnels had been forgotten. In the rush of combat, and the horror of what came after. 

Roy held her, after she was healed, and told her he loved her. She hadn’t responded. She hadn’t been able to, at the time - emotionally, if not physically. 

Riza stares straight ahead, marshaling her composure. “I don’t agree with that, General.”

“I’m sorry, Hawkeye.” Roy sounds just as broken, just as anguished, as he had in the tunnels. “I let things get out of control.” 

“Yes,” Riza replies evenly. “You did.”

“I broke the vow we made to one another when you joined this unit. When I strayed from my path, you did what I ordered you to. You tried to stop me. I should have listened to you, instead of trying to force you out of my way.” A barely perceptible shudder courses through him. “The things I said to you and Fullmetal… what I almost did to both of you… I’m so sorry. It was among the worst mistakes of my life.” 

Riza closes her eyes, struggling to process the raw grief and shame in his voice. Roy can’t see her, but she nods once in acknowledgment. 

“Never again,” Roy promises. He bows his head. “I always knew that there was a darkness inside me. Now that I understand just how bad things can get, I will never let myself be consumed by that kind of rage again. I swear that to you. If I ever come close to crossing that line again, I want you to shoot me.”

“No.” 

Roy looks up, startled by the flat refusal. Riza takes a deep breath. “I won’t be the one to execute you. I’ll find another way to address the situation and bring you under control. But if you ever sink to such depths again, I will leave you, and you will never, ever have my forgiveness.” 

The precisely chosen words find their mark, and Roy flinches. “Yes, Captain. I understand.”

“Good.” Riza’s throat hurts again, and she reaches up and massages it. The confession slips out involuntarily. “I can’t do that again, General. What we did in the tunnels. It nearly broke me.” 

“I know.” Roy wipes his eyes. “You’ll never have to.”

They sit in silence for a long while, wrapped up in their own thoughts and sorrows. “I thought…” Roy clears his throat. “I thought you hated me.”

“No,” Riza replies quietly. “I’ve had some time to think as well. When I saw what Wrath did to you…” 

She has to take a second to collect herself. “It sent me over the edge. It reminded me of the way I felt after we learned about Shou and Nina Tucker. I’ve always believed that executions should be humane. Still, I thought that a bullet through the head was too good for Tucker. I wanted to shoot him in the gut, and the pelvis, and blow out his kneecaps, and let him bleed to death in agony. I thought that would be the slow, painful death he deserved.” 

Even after a year, her loathing for Shou Tucker hasn’t dulled. Roy turns toward her slightly. 

“What I mean to say is that I understand you, sir. Maybe I, too, could have been capable of doing what you did, if I was pushed far enough.” Riza tries not to think about what she would have done if she were in Roy’s place. If Envy murdered Roy or Rebecca in cold blood, and laughed about it with cruel glee. “I’ve done terrible things too.” Her voice grows quiet. “Maybe I have no room to judge you. Besides, you pulled back, before it was too late. That meant something to me.”

Roy places one of his hands on the bed. He pats the blankets as if searching for something, before finding her hand. He rests it on hers gently, before pulling back. “You’re gracious, Captain. I’m lucky to be the beneficiary of your grace.”

“It was Edward who prompted me to start thinking along these lines.” Riza remembers how Edward gripped Envy in his hands and spoke to the little homunculus with such understanding and compassion. “He said that when we stray and fall, we keep facing our challenges, and our loved ones are always there to help pick us back up.” 

Roy smiles faintly. “I don’t know when or how Fullmetal got so wise.” 

“You’ve always been there for me, at my lowest.” Riza remembers all of those low points; all the tears she has shed in Roy’s arms. She remembers the way he gave her his handkerchief and his coat, when she had been sixteen and sobbing over her father. The way he wiped her tears from her cheeks with his thumbs after what happened to Nina. The way he stroked her back, trying to comfort her, after the unit was disbanded. The way he pressed a soft kiss to her brow after she told him her secret. “You’ve always given me your unconditional support. You’ve always helped me back up, and helped me move forward. I know that if I were the one who strayed from my path, who lost control, you would give me a second chance.”

Roy’s fingers close around the blanket, like he wants to take her hand again. “Yes,” he acknowledges. 

They are quiet again, for a time, before he continues. “I remember how you looked at me, then,” Roy murmurs. “And after.”

Riza tenses up. She normally keeps a cool, reserved demeanor, but Roy can see through that, even at the best of times. She had been long past calm and composed in the tunnels. Her fear and pain must have been apparent to him. 

(It occurs to her that the last memories Roy will have of seeing her, will be of her recoiling from his fury, and leveling her gun at his head. And then, later, bleeding to death. It makes her slightly sick.) 

“I know that you want to be forgiving, but are you really going to be able to continue working alongside me after that? To say nothing of--” Roy stops, the slightest flush warming his complexion. “I hate that you saw me like that.” 

“I can’t forget what happened, sir, and I shouldn’t,” Riza replies honestly. A small part of her will always remember it. The harshness of Roy’s voice as he snarled at Envy and Edward and at her, lashing out with savage force again and again. As she should. She has to remember it, and be mindful and watchful of warning signs that he might be slipping again. “But I don’t think it’s insurmountable.”

“Tell me if it is,” Roy orders, at once. “At any point. Tell me if it’s too much for you, and if you need distance from me. In any way,” he presses, making his meaning clear. “I’ll honor that. It’s the least I can do.” 

“I will.” Riza rests her hand on his. “Thank you.”

“I want to be your safe place again, Captain.” Roy’s voice is barely audible. “I want you to trust me.”

“I do.” Riza traces her fingertips along the fine bones of his fingers. He is capable of such tenderness, such caring, and such destructive force. Duality, in practice. “And at the end, you were.”

Some of the tension eases from Roy’s face. He presses his bandaged palm to hers, and rubs his thumb over her knuckles in a light caress. Part of her wants to lean into him, but Riza remains still, for now. “I’m sorry for everything that you went through on the Promised Day, sir. Being forced to open the portal and confront Truth and Father, losing your sight, and seeing me endangered.” Any one of those things alone would have been enough to break a lesser man. Roy weathered all of them and still had the strength and resolve to fight. 

Roy grimaces slightly. “The only unbearable thing about that day was watching what they did to you.” He interlaces his fingers with hers somewhat clumsily. “I’m sorry for what you experienced, Hawkeye. It must have been terrifying. All of it. You’ve been through enough, even before any of that.”

It had been a day where her nightmares became reality. Riza refuses to linger on it. (It is more trauma to bury deep within her.) “We made it through. It’s behind us. All we can do is move forward.”

“Well spoken, Captain.” Roy rubs the back of his neck. “Speaking of moving forward, I assume Grumman let you know about our plans for Ishval.” 

“Yes, sir.” Riza hesitates. “We should also make plans for your new status. I’m not sure what you’ve already discussed with the rest of the unit.”

“Quite a bit. Fuery mentioned some kind of device in the library that translates written script into raised Amestrian script. He said he could order one for our office in Central, and our new headquarters in Ishval. Breda bought a book on tape about the process of adjusting to vision loss, but I haven’t listened to it yet.” Roy smiles, the expression brief but beautiful. “You’ll like this. Falman said that one of the sergeants at Fort Briggs has a wife who’s blind, and she uses a dog to help her get around. Breda wasn’t thrilled with that idea, but he said he could come around to it. I’m partial to that myself.”

“I’ll support whatever you’re most comfortable with, sir.” Riza turns to him. Roy’s features are calm and resolute. She sees the exhaustion and strain written in the lines around his eyes, and the dark circles underneath them. But his shoulders are straight, and there’s that determined set to his mouth that she knows so well.

 _Strength,_ Riza thinks, again. _Resolve. Courage._ Roy isn’t wavering from his goal, regardless of the new challenges he faces.

(She doesn’t expect the wave of tenderness that washes over her; the reminder that this is partly why she fell in love with him in the first place.)

Riza sits with that feeling for a little while. 

“General,” she says. “I’m going to brush the hair out of your eyes.”

Roy blinks, as though those had been the last words he expected. He angles himself toward her, giving her silent, implicit permission.

Riza brushes the hair out of his eyes, and she lets the touch linger. Roy’s dark locks are soft and thick between her fingers. His hair has grown long, in need of a trim. He sits still for her, but he blinks again, as though disoriented by the fact that she is so close to him, but he is unable to see her. 

Riza remembers, again, all the times Roy has offered her comfort and solace. She knows, from the way he holds himself, that he won’t ask that of her now. He doesn’t feel he has the right to. 

So she offers it, instead. She wraps her arms around him in a gentle embrace. Roy crumbles against her, burying his face in his hair. He sobs once, just once, and Riza holds him close. 

They stay like that for a long time.

* * *

_to be continued_   
  


* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you so much to everybody who left comments and kudos on the previous chapter! I love reading them; it's one of the highlights of my week. 
> 
> A few notes--
> 
> It was a breath of fresh air to write non-canon content in this chapter. It was a lot of talking and no action, but I think these were important conversations Riza had to have with the people who were closest to her. 
> 
> It was saddening to write Riza's conversation with Rebecca. Rebecca is so worried about her, considering what she knows of Riza's history. As much as I love Riza and Roy together, and as much as we all know that Roy genuinely loves her, I would be worried too, if my best friend came to me and told me, "I'm in love with my commanding officer and the feeling's mutual, but we had a huge fight where I put a gun to his head, and he was an inch from losing his temper at me, with potentially disastrous consequences." I would probably say, "I love you, so that's why I'm telling you, let's take SEVERAL steps back from this situation here and think about if you want to move forward with this relationship." 
> 
> I can see both sides, where some people might find what Roy did to be unforgivable, and others might think he is deserving of the second chance Riza gave him. As much as Riza found his behavior with Envy in the tunnels unacceptable, and as much as he triggered her, she still loves him too much to walk away. They have a bond forged in fire, a long history, a shared vision for the future, and a deep understanding of one another. I hope Riza's thoughts on the matter were portrayed clearly. 
> 
> I always enjoy writing Riza and Grumman's interactions, and I especially enjoyed it in this chapter. It was fascinating to explore their political differences of opinion, despite their affection for one another. 
> 
> Roy and Grumman definitely had a heated exchange while Riza was unconscious. :( 
> 
> I loved transitioning from the Lieutenant and the Colonel to the Captain and the General. They deserve it. ❤️ 
> 
> I would love to hear what you thought of the chapter and the charged conversations. Comments are deeply appreciated and treasured.
> 
> Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it! I am also on tumblr @lantur if you would like to connect. :)


	19. seventeen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Important note: Excerpts of the dialogue and events in this chapter are taken from Brotherhood; they are not original content.

They finally disentangle themselves from one another. Roy draws the back of his hand against his face, wiping away the tears he silently shed. Riza has never seen him cry like this, not even on the night that they learned about Hughes’ murder, or at his funeral. 

“This is embarrassing.” Roy’s face is red. “I’m sorry, Captain.”

There is a box of soft tissues on the bedside table. Riza takes a few, and presses them into his hands. “There’s nothing embarrassing about it. I’ve cried in front of you a few times. When I apologized, you told me I had nothing to apologize for.” 

“That’s different,” Roy mutters. 

Riza raises an eyebrow at him. “Why? Because I’m a woman?”

“Yes,” Roy replies, with unusual bluntness.

“That is the most regressive thing I’ve ever heard you say, General.” Riza pauses. “That’s the most regressive thing I’ve heard  _ anyone  _ on this unit say.” 

Roy fidgets in response to the admonishment. “Sorry. I was being honest.”

Riza spares a moment for exasperation at men - especially male soldiers - and their attitudes. “There’s a wastebasket to your right, about a foot away from the edge of the bed.”

Roy leans over, dropping the crumpled tissues into the wastebasket. “Did I make it?”

“You did.” 

“It’s the small things, now.” Roy sighs. 

Riza studies him, determining whether she should press further. “You may find it helpful to do this more often, sir.” 

Roy attempts the smirk he would always give her and the unit while cracking bad jokes in the office. “What, practice my aim?” 

“No.” Roy may not be able to see her glare anymore, but he wilts at the flat tone of her voice. “Let yourself cry if you’re sad, or feeling overwhelmed or hopeless. It’s a harmless release.” 

Her unspoken words hang between them; that shedding tears is less harmful than the other, more violent, explosive, release of his emotions. 

“You’re right.” Roy’s voice is barely audible. “But I don’t feel better for doing it. It just - hurts. It makes me feel helpless, like I’m sinking into my own sorrow. I don’t like that.”

Riza takes that in. She felt that way too, as a little girl sobbing for her mother. “Do you feel better for doing the alternative?” 

“Yes,” Roy says, at once. Then his shoulders slump. “But it’s temporary, and I see that there’s a high cost. One that I’m not willing to pay.”

“Good,” Riza replies evenly. “It’s just something to think about.”

“I will.” Roy brushes his hand against hers, where it rests on the blankets between them. It’s a light, tentative touch. “You’re very wise.”

Riza smiles slightly. The gesture still feels unfamiliar on her lips, after the strain of the Promised Day, and the weeks, the months, before that. She had so little cause to smile, for so long. “I know.”

They talk about their plans for Ishval and for Roy’s rehabilitation until Riza’s voice grows hoarse and soft, and she has to punctuate each sentence to massage her throat. Even her periodic sips of water from the tall glass resting on Roy’s bedside table doesn’t alleviate her discomfort. 

“Enough,” Roy decides, after she has a brief spell of coughing. “You’re hurting yourself. We can talk more tomorrow. Breda gave me a watch with an alarm set for seven-hundred hours. It’ll also vibrate every hour so that I can keep track of the passage of time, but it won’t be loud enough to disturb you.” 

Riza glances at the watch resting on Roy’s bedside table. That will be a helpful aid. But it’s not late now, barely twenty-one hundred hours. “We have important matters to discuss, sir.”

“I mean this in the most respectful way, Captain, but be quiet. That’s an order. You don’t need to acknowledge it out loud,” Roy adds, as an afterthought. “Or argue with me, for that matter.”

Under normal circumstances, Riza would have narrowed her eyes at him. Not for the first time, she realizes that they will have to modify the way they have always communicated nonverbally. Body language and subtle facial expressions won’t suffice any longer. 

It’s unlike her to be physically expressive with him. The extent of her tactile contact with Roy (barring a few specific instances, none of which had been professional) has been a hand placed on his arm.

Riza reaches out and taps him once, sharply, on the wrist. A silent rebuke.

Roy sits up straight, surprised, and then he actually smiles. It lights up his face. “Message received.” 

Riza returns to her hospital bed, next to Roy’s. He stands up, supporting himself with his hand on the railing at the head of the bed. She can tell from the look on his face that he’s lapsed deep into thought about what they discussed. She settles into the bed, pulling the covers over herself, staring at the ceiling and processing her own thoughts. 

They have a great deal to plan and accomplish. Rebuilding a depopulated, destroyed region large enough to encompass an entire former nation will be no simple endeavor. Ishval is just over one hundred and eighty-five thousand square kilometers in area. It was once composed of sixty-five districts, with a population of roughly nine-hundred thousand souls. 

The genocide was incomplete, despite the best efforts of Fuhrer Bradley’s regime. Thousands of Ishvalans fled the region prior to the outbreak of the civil war, as well as over the eight years of the civil war itself. They escaped into Amestris, mostly, though a good portion braved the crossing into Xing. Even after Order 3066 was handed down, Ishvalans managed to escape Amestrian infantry, snipers, and State Alchemists, thanks to their own ingenuity and resilience. Certain Amestrian snipers also looked the other way, bypassing fleeing women and children sighted through their scopes. 

Riza’s stomach clenches. Yes, thousands of Ishvalans had escaped. There is still no census on exactly how many Ishvalan survivors remain, scattered in slums across the Eastern area of Amestris, the ruins of Xerxes in the Eastern desert, and Xing. Living in the shadows, in poverty, in most cases. 

They will return Ishval to its former status as an independent nation and holy land. They have to get the word out to the Ishvalan survivors that they can return to their former home, if they choose. Either now, early in the reconstruction process if they would like to assist in the reconstruction, or later, once Ishval is fully restored. 

To start, they will have to rebuild infrastructure. Major thoroughfares and roads in general. They will have to ensure widespread electricity and clean water, sewage, and waste disposal and processing. They will have to rebuild homes, primary and secondary schools, institutes of higher education, temples, businesses, and offices, from the ground up. 

At least alchemists can use their abilities to help with that kind of physical reconstruction. They have Roy, and he suggested reaching out to Major Armstrong to see if he would be interested in joining them in Ishval. Falman informed Roy that General Armstrong had rescued Scar, as well. Three gifted alchemists can do the work of three hundred laborers in a single day. 

(The thought stirs the dormant bitterness and regret inside her. Her specialized skill can only be used to destroy, not rebuild. But she has her intelligence, determination, and strength, and she will set all of those to doing everything she can for the restoration efforts.) 

They will have to reintroduce livestock and crops. Cotton for economic and practical purposes, and wheat, vegetables, fruit, and other grains to feed the people. They will have to import what they can’t grow or harvest, especially at first. Food, building resources, and materials to create power lines, water mains, water towers, and sewage lines. Grumman’s support will ensure low-cost access to imports, at least. In time, they will have to think about exports and trade with Amestris and Xing, and other ways to revitalize the Ishvalan nation and let it flourish economically. 

Riza mulls over the fastest way to establish power lines and water mains until sleep claims her.

-

Her night is restless, punctuated by terrible dreams soaked in blood and alight with flame. Envy lives within her nightmares, in all of his iterations. His massive, dog-like form, his guise of Roy, his human form with the long, spiky black hair and pale skin. The doctor lives within her nightmares too, as a human and as the hideous lump he’d been after Roy performed human transmutation on him. 

Pride lurks in the shadows, all grasping hands and sharp, gleaming teeth. Wrath slits her throat and throws her to the hard, cold stone floor. Riza dreams of reaching toward Roy, her arm slick with her own blood, pooling underneath her. But she’s not able to reach him. He is restrained by his captors, unable to come to her and hold her in his arms. Her mother watches her from the corner of the room, clad in the blue nightgown she wore at the end, and weeps to see her daughter dying at twenty-six.  _ No, my sweetheart,  _ she cries.  _ I wanted so much more for you.  _

Riza’s dreams shift to Roy, in the tunnels, with Envy. His voice is thick with fury. His handsome features, as familiar to her as her own, are twisted with rage.  _ I won’t ask again.  _ Lightning crackles between his fingers. 

Riza forces herself awake. (She can’t live through that again. Not even in her nightmares.) She wakes with a start, her heart pounding, her breath harsh and ragged. Her chest aches. She is desperate with how much she wants to hold Black Hayate. In the almost three years since she adopted her dog, she has never had to weather a nightmare without him by her side. 

She burrows under the covers, pretending that the spare pillow she clutches is Hayate, and bites back an uncharacteristic whimper.

\- 

They wake at seven-hundred hours and ready themselves for the day. Riza notes the dark circles underneath Roy’s eyes. It is clear that his night had been every bit as troubled as hers. She doesn’t have a chance to ask him how he’s feeling, between their morning showers and visits from nurses who check in on both of their conditions. 

Roy seems unruffled by his rough night. He is as polite and charming as ever to the nurses, who he remembers from his and Havoc’s hospital stay last year. He greets them by name, and inquires about the litter of kittens that lived behind Hannah’s apartment building, and Iris’s young son. 

Riza overhears the conversations, as Iris checks on the wound healing on her neck, and Hannah changes the bandages on Roy’s hands. It gives her a bittersweet sensation. Roy can be hot-tempered and brusque, but he genuinely cares about people in a way that transcends his cultivated, deliberate charisma and charm. He would have been a fine President.

_ He will be,  _ Riza reminds herself.  _ In time.  _

Breda, Fuery, and Falman report to the hospital room at eight-hundred hours sharp, with Maria Ross volunteering to stand guard outside while the unit is in conference. Each of them carries an armful of files and books. They balance their items precariously, offering salutes. “Good morning, General Mustang, Captain Hawkeye!”

Falman also carries two brown paper bags and to-go coffee cups from the Aster Cafe, a lunch spot the unit frequented before they were disbanded. He offers one bag to Roy, and the other to her. “A bagel sandwich with lox for you, General, and coffee with extra espresso. Blueberry oatmeal and, ah, room temperature water for you, Captain.”

“Thank you, Falman.” Roy devours his bagel sandwich with obvious relish. 

Riza looks mournfully between Roy’s bagel sandwich and her oatmeal, which has the appearance and consistency of baby food. Some black tea would have given her the energy to get through the day ahead. 

Falman reads her expression. “Sorry, Captain,” he says, abashed. “The charge nurse told Lieutenant Catalina and Fuhrer-President Grumman that you are supposed to be on soft foods and room-temperature liquids for the next week.” 

“It’s fine.” Riza takes a bite of her oatmeal. The night of rest had been a helpful respite for her vocal cords. It doesn’t hurt to talk any longer, although she probably still shouldn’t push it. “If Mei Chang hadn’t been around, I wouldn’t be eating anything at all. Where is she? I would like to thank her.”

“She left for Xing before you woke up, along with Lan Fan and Ling.” Breda sets his box of files on the floor and begins rifling through them. “Lan Fan told us they would call when they got back home. She said to give you her best.” 

It would be nice to talk to Lan Fan again. Her automail arm looked impressive, and she moved with ease. It is a relief to know that she hadn’t been forced to give up her purpose as Ling Yao’s bodyguard, even after her life-changing injury. 

Roy finishes his bagel sandwich and starts gulping down his coffee. “Were you all able to find what you were looking for? I know that the city is in disarray right now, and Command is the worst off.”

“The library’s fine. I’ve got the materials about city planning you requested here, sir.” Fuery indicates his books. “I have three reports on utilities being converted to raised Amestrian script at the library right now, too. They should be ready by the end of the business day today.” 

“The Central Command archival rooms escaped undamaged,” Falman reports. “I have the latest census reports, town-by-town, of the entire Eastern region. I am sure that the Ishvalan population was drastically undercounted, but this will give us a starting point for an estimate.”

“I’ve got the agriculture info.” Breda pulls out a stack of manila folders. 

“Good. Let’s pick up where we left off yesterday with the agriculture reports. I want to see how much I remember.”

Riza frowns. Roy has an almost superhuman ability to memorize anything related to the sciences, but his memory for other topics isn’t the best. Right now, he isn’t able to pick up a report and flip through it for a quick read to refresh his memory, either. They will have to examine ways to expedite the conversion of written text to raised Amestrian script. As his assistant, she will always be able to serve as a reader if the need arises, but that isn’t a perfect solution. Roy should have as much independence as possible, for his own sake, as well as for the public perception of the future Fuhrer-President. 

“Alright.” Breda flips to a random page of his report. “Give me the farming method that was used in the Ishvalan region.”

There is a brief knock on the door, and Maria opens it, leading Dr. Knox inside. They stop at the entrance to the room, but Roy doesn’t react to the sound of the door opening, or their footsteps. ( _ He’s going to have to train the acuity of his other senses,  _ Riza thinks.) His brow furrows in concentration. “The farming method used in the Ishvalan region was mainly double-cropping.” 

Breda shakes his head. “Nope. It’s called dual-cropping. Close, but you’ve got to know this stuff inside out.”

“I do know it.” Roy crosses his arms over his chest. 

“Oh, yeah? Which two crops were the Ishvalans known for cultivating?” 

The two of them had discussed this just the previous night. “Wheat and cotton,” Roy replies confidently.

“That’s right.” Breda grins. “Not a bad guess.”

“Give me some credit,” Roy scoffs. “I started researching this stuff a few years ago, you know.”

Dr. Knox gapes, apparently taken aback to see Roy doing so well. Riza understands. His resolve and spirit surprised her last evening, as well. “The General wants to restore Ishval before becoming the Fuhrer,” Maria explains in an undertone, filling Knox in. 

“Well, that’s ambitious.” Dr. Knox approaches both of them. His posture is better than Riza remembers from when she last saw him, the previous autumn. He doesn’t radiate the same sense of weariness and sorrow. His complexion is healthier, and he looks well-rested. “What makes you so sure that Grumman will choose you to succeed him?”

Roy frowns, trying to place Knox’s voice, and Riza sees the comprehension click into place. “How long have you been in here, Dr. Knox?”

“Not long.” Knox studies Roy. “You don’t look so bad. How are you adjusting? How are your eyes?”

“There’s been no change since what happened on the Promised Day.” Roy smiles, for the benefit of his old friend and his unit, but Riza can tell that the gesture takes an effort. “I envisioned a better future, and this was the price I had to pay for it. At least Truth didn’t take my intelligence.” 

Knox blinks, startled by the response. “You’re okay with that?” 

“I wouldn’t say I’m  _ okay. _ ” Roy shrugs. This time, his smile is more genuine. “But I won’t let it stop me from moving forward, either.”

His resilience reminds her of a conversation they had over one late night in the office, a couple of months after she began working for the unit. She asked about the timeframe of Roy’s plan, and how long it would take him to supplant Fuhrer Bradley.  _ Ten years is my goal.  _ Roy twirled his pen through his fingers, as he always did when mulling things over.  _ Fifteen might be more accurate. We’ll be in this for the long haul, Second Lieutenant.  _

_ That’s fine with me, sir,  _ Riza replied, without hesitation _. There’s nothing else I want to do with my life.  _ (And at nineteen, there had been nothing else she wanted for her life. That was years before traitorous, selfish dreams and wishes to travel the world, to marry, to be a mother.) 

_ I feel the same way _ .  _ We’ll make this happen, no matter what obstacles we face along the way. I have no doubt there will be many.  _

Those words hadn’t been empty words. The sentiment hadn’t been hollow, though neither of them foresaw an obstacle like this. It is good to be reminded that she had sworn herself to the right person after all. 

“I hear that you’re going to aid in the reconstruction of Ishval?” Knox asks. 

“You heard right. The Ishvalan War of Extermination destroyed the country, but not all of its people. It’s time for us to begin the work of making things right for the survivors.” 

“That war is where everything went wrong for those innocent Ishvalans, and for this country,” Knox murmurs. “For the lives of so many soldiers who served, too. Even though we probably deserve that.”

_ For the lives of so many soldiers who served, too.  _ Ishval changed the course of her life. It did irreversible damage to her mind and soul, staining both with the blood of innocents. Riza thinks, fleetingly, of the burden Roy carries. Of Brody and Patrickson, the two snipers on her old team who had committed suicide, unable to live with what they had done. (She learned, after returning home from the front lines, that an epidemic of suicide swept through Amestrian snipers stationed in Ishval immediately after Order 3066 took effect, and in the months immediately following the end of the war.) 

Roy’s words jolt her out of her reverie. “The new Fuhrer-President has agreed to end the military occupation of Ishval, and return it to the survivors of the genocide. That’s just the beginning. There’s a lot of work for us to do to make Ishval an inhabitable, viable homeland.”

“We owe them so much,” Fuery chimes in. “We’d all be dead now, if not for Scar and the Ishvalans. It’s the very least we can do to repay them.” 

Riza warms with pride. Falman, Breda, and Fuery hadn’t served in Ishval. They don’t share the responsibility that she and Roy do. Still, the three of them hadn’t hesitated to pledge themselves to Roy’s new purpose for the unit. It will be years of difficult, demanding work, both mentally and physically. Deployment to Ishval will take them far from their homes and their families. Far from the comfortable, well-paying, high-ranking positions that they would have enjoyed as Roy’s senior staff in the role he would have had, as the Fuhrer-President of Amestris. 

“We know that this won’t erase our sins.” Riza folds her hands in her lap. Nothing they do for Ishval will ever erase the reality that they are rebuilding what they callously destroyed. Nothing they do will ever bring back the hundreds of thousands of lives that were stolen. “But it’s not too late to fix things.”

“This room just reeks of optimism,” Knox remarks. He raises his voice, calling out. “Hey, Dr. Marcoh, are you hearing all of this? They’re already one step ahead of you.”

Roy tenses up. “Dr. Marcoh is here?”

Riza has heard of Dr. Marcoh, the doctor who held the Philosopher’s Stone. He was captured by the homunculi before she ever had the chance to meet him. The older man enters the room, coming to join them. Dr. Marcoh reaches into his coat, and Riza stiffens reflexively, even though she knows that he is an ally.

“General Mustang.” Marcoh pulls out a small, blood-red stone, holding it between his fingers. The sunlight catches it, making it sparkle. She’s seen a couple of these before. “I bought a Philosopher’s Stone with me. I believe that it might be able to restore your vision.”

Roy’s shock is echoed in the rest of the unit’s expressions. “I suppose so,” he says slowly. Riza looks at him, her hands curling into fists around her blankets. This is what Roy wanted to use to heal Havoc, after Havoc sustained his spinal injury in autumn. She had been vehemently opposed to the idea on principle. As powerful as the Philosopher’s Stones were, each stone was born out of blood, suffering, and human sacrifice. When she voiced her opposition, Roy told her,  _ I don’t have time for moral reservations right now.  _

Marcoh curls his hand around the stone, bowing his head. “I created this stone by sacrificing the lives of many Ishvalans. It might be presumptuous of me to ask you this, but if your intentions are to help their relatives, please let me heal you with it, so you can restore Ishval.”

It isn’t her place to speak on this. Marcoh had been addressing Roy, and only Roy. Riza bites back her instinctive response.  _ The General doesn’t need that to restore Ishval.  _ Roy is the most intelligent, driven man she knows. He can rebuild Ishval, and he can take on the leadership of Amestris, with or without his vision.

But Roy doesn’t offer the automatic denial she expected (hoped) he would. He closes his eyes, deliberating on the issue. “I know some people who might not like that idea. Especially Fullmetal.” 

Riza is on the verge of asking for the room in order to discuss this, with just the two of them. Roy continues before she can speak up. “I’ll accept your offer, Dr. Marcoh, and I’ll devote my life to seeing Ishval restored to its former state. But there’s someone else who needs that stone even more than I do. You can heal me, on the condition that you heal him first.” 

Breda, Falman, and Fuery, standing by the window, exchange excited looks with one another. Riza watches, numb. 

“Ah,” Knox comments. “Your friend with that spinal injury?”

“Are you sure, General?” Marcoh presses. “I’m not sure if enough power will remain in the stone to restore your vision, in that case.” 

Roy holds firm. “I’m positive. Havoc gets healed first. Those are my terms.” 

“All right, then. Is he in this hospital as well?”

“He’s with his family in Womiob. Breda, call Havoc and ask him to get himself over here as soon as he can.”

Breda salutes. Riza can’t remember the last time she saw Breda this excited. He’s practically beaming. _Of course he’s happy,_ she thinks, strangely detached. _He’s going to be able to serve alongside his best friend again. Havoc is going to have the normal life that we all thought he lost._ Of course Breda, Falman, and Fuery are happy. She should be, too. “Yes, sir.”

Roy turns back to Marcoh. “Havoc should be able to get back to Central by Monday morning.”

“Good. I’ll come back here then. Thank you, General.”

Marcoh and Knox leave, followed by Breda and Maria, returning to her guard post outside of the door. Riza barely hears Falman and Fuery talking to Roy about how long Havoc’s recovery period will be, and whether he will be able to join them in Ishval late this summer. Fuery mentions that he can cancel the order he put in for a print-to-raised Amestrian script converter. 

Her insides roil with confusion. She needs to get some air. Riza stands, slipping on her shoes. Roy turns toward her at the sound of movement. “Captain?”

“I’m feeling a little stiff. I’ve never been this inactive.” It’s the truth. The muscles in her lower back and her legs ache, though that’s the least of her worries. “I’m going to go for a walk to stretch my legs. I’ll call Rebecca too, and ask her to bring some files over from my office. I have a couple of contacts at Eastern Command who can help us with shipping tents, rations, and medical supplies to Ishval.” 

“Will you be okay by yourself, Captain?” Fuery asks. “I can escort you.”

“I’m fine, Second Lieutenant. You and Falman can stay with the General while Breda calls Havoc.” 

Riza stops in the bathroom to change clothes, trading her hospital clothing for a skirt and light sweater. Maria turns to her when she steps out of the room. “Are you okay, Captain Hawkeye? You look a little pale.”

“I’m fine.” Her hands are cold. Riza draws her sleeves down over them. “Edward and Alphonse are up on the rehabilitation wing, right?”

“Yes. Ed is in 402, and Al is across the hall from him.” Maria grins. “There are phones in both of their rooms, but they just yell back and forth to each other when they’re not together. It’s cute.”

“Of course they would.” Riza waves at her. “See you later, Second Lieutenant.” 

She turns the corner and makes her way to the window at the end of the long hallway. This is a quiet spot, out of sight of the nurses’ station and the other patients’ rooms. Riza leans against the wall and presses her fingertips to her temples. Her thoughts are a tumult. There is nothing she wants more than to be alone at the Central Command gun range right now, breathing in the familiar, acrid scent of gunpowder. She wants the comforting weight of her pistols in both of her hands, and the soothing pressure of the protective ear coverings around her head. 

That solace is out of reach, and will be for the next few days, at least. There’s no point dwelling on the lack of it. Riza proceeds to the elevator and takes it up to the rehabilitation wing. It is familiar to her, after all the times she visited Havoc here. She finds Edward’s room empty, and Alphonse’s. The nurses at the station inform her that the brothers are in physical therapy right now, but they can take visitors, and they point her to the therapy gym.

It is an expansive space, as large as the gym in Central Command, and bustling with activity. Riza wanders the perimeter of the gym until she finds Edward and Alphonse sitting at a table with several large tins of brightly colored putty in front of them, talking animatedly as they manipulate the substance with their hands.

Alphonse catches sight of her first. His long hair has been tied back into a ponytail reminiscent of Edward’s. “Captain Hawkeye!” he calls, lifting a hand in greeting, and Riza is struck by what a sweet smile he has. He and Edward share a pronounced resemblance.

Edward looks up, abandoning his pursuit of sculpting the putty into a semblance of a cat. “Hey, Captain!” 

Riza approaches them. “Please don’t stand,” she orders, after noticing the walker resting near Alphonse’s side of the table, and the cane resting near Edward’s side. They both stand anyway, and she smiles at them. “It’s nice to not have to crane my neck to look you in the eye, Alphonse. And Edward - I didn’t realize how tall you’ve gotten.” 

Alphonse’s eyes sparkle with mischief. They are golden, like Edward’s, although now she can see they are more round than his brother’s. “It must be nice for you not to have to strain your neck to look  _ down _ at Brother, either.” 

“Hey!” Edward jabs a finger at him. “Captain Hawkeye was never that much taller than me! Not like Lieutenant Falman and Lieutenant Havoc!”

“Sure, if you think a seven-inch difference wasn’t significant,” Riza replies dryly. Edward looks so utterly betrayed by the remark that she laughs.

“It’s good to see that you’re better, Captain.” Alphonse places a hand on the table to support himself. “We were really worried.”

“I’m fine. I’m glad that the two of you made it through the battle, as well.” Riza hesitates, feeling slightly awkward. As much as she likes touch, as comforting as she finds it, she is accustomed to holding herself back from physical contact with everyone besides Black Hayate, Rebecca, and Grumman. Women in the military don’t give hugs. She has embraced Falman, Breda, and Fuery twice in the past seven years, and both instances had been immediately preceding and following the ordeal of the Promised Day. “May I give you a hug?”

Edward hugs her tightly, by way of response. “I’m proud of you,” Riza whispers. She blinks away her tears. Edward surmounted odds that appeared insurmountable, and he did it all with his principles intact. 

“Thanks, Captain.” Edward clears his throat self-consciously as he steps back. 

Alphonse’s grip is considerably less strong than Edward’s. His arms are thin and frail, his chest narrow, and Riza can feel how fragile he is. He is skin and bones. “As soon as they let me out of here, I’m going to bring you an entire shepherd’s pie,” she promises. 

“That would be great,” Alphonse says, with feeling. “I  _ love  _ potatoes. They have the best texture, don’t they?”

Edward rolls his eyes affectionately. “All you’ve had so far is hospital food. You’ll go crazy when you eat Captain Hawkeye’s roast potatoes - and Winry’s apple pie.”

The three of them sit at the table, and Edward tears off a chunk of the purple putty from the tin and hands it to her. Riza prods it once. “What’s this for?”

“It’s a more fun way to exercise the muscles in our hands.” Edward pulls a face. “This is so much better than what they had us doing earlier. We spent ages on these boring hand stretches.”

“Your therapy must be intense.” Riza takes the putty and squeezes it in her hands. It’s oddly satisfying. 

“We’re at it from morning until evening.” Alphonse’s sculpture is more ambitious than Edward’s; his creation is easily identifiable as a large rose. “It’s a little tiring. I fall asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow at night.” 

“How long do they expect your rehabilitation to take?”

“They said three months for Al, at least. I bet he’s going to get done before that, though. He’s been doing great.” Edward’s pride in his younger brother is evident, as always. “They said it’ll be one month for me, but--”

“Please don’t say you’re going to get it done in two weeks,” Riza interrupts.

Edward grins, irrepressible as ever. “I’m going to be in great shape in the next two weeks. I’ll stick around, though, for as long as Al is going through therapy. I’m not going to leave him here by himself. I might as well do some bonus training while I’m waiting. I’ll have to get the whole retirement thing all figured out, too. Lieutenant Breda mentioned that there are benefits, or something?” 

Riza’s fingers fumble on her putty, and it slips out of her grasp. Of course. She should have realized - there’s no reason for Edward to remain in the military, now. “Yes,” she manages, regaining her composure. “There’s a monthly pension, and a biannual health benefit for yourself and all members of your immediate family. I’ll arrange everything for you as soon as I get back into the office.”

“Hey, don’t push yourself to get back to work on my account. I think you’ve earned a vacation, Captain.”

“Thanks.” Riza picks up her putty and squeezes it again, trying to come to terms with the bittersweet sorrow welling up inside her. This is a happy ending for Edward and Alphonse. They have their bodies back, and they have each other. They have their whole lives ahead of them, and they are free to pursue anything they want. Still, she will miss them. “Are you heading back to Resembool?” she asks. “Winry will be excited to see both of you again.”

Edward accidentally knocks over one of the tins of putty, and Alphonse stifles a laugh. “Yeah! Yeah, we’ll be going back to Resembool.” He looks at her curiously. “I heard that your unit is going to Ishval. So you’ll just be a few hours east of us.”

“Yes.” Perhaps it is just because she is already uneasy, but the acknowledgement stirs the faintest apprehension inside her. Riza begins molding her putty into a sculpture of Black Hayate.

Edward is silent for a short time. “Are you… are you going to be okay with that? I know it might be painful to go back there.”

She hasn’t allowed herself to think about that. She has pushed it away into a corner of her mind, unable to address it right now. “I’ll have to be okay with it. There’s work to be done.” 

“Okay.” Edward lets it drop. “I know I can’t help with my alchemy anymore, but let me know if there’s anything I can do to help with the reconstruction, anyway.”

“Me too,” Alphonse adds. “You know how to get in touch with us in Resembool. I want to travel to Xing when I can, and I’ll plan to spend time in Ishval on the way there and back.”

It is a reassurance to know that even though Edward won’t be in the military anymore, the brothers will still be around, when they can be. Riza smiles. “Thank you.”

Edward adds a red mane to his cat sculpture, turning it into a miniature lion. “I bet things in Ishval are going to be hard for the Colonel. The General,” he corrects, belatedly. “I keep doing that. It’s weird - I didn’t have a problem with your new rank.”

“Well, considering that you’re resigning from the military, you don’t have to address me by rank at all anymore,” Riza points out. “You could call me Riza, like Winry does.”

Edward and Alphonse stare at her like she had just started speaking in Xingese. Riza sighs. “Regarding things in Ishval - Dr. Marcoh just paid us a visit. He heard about our plan for the Ishvalan reconstruction, and he offered to use his Philosopher’s Stone to restore the General’s sight. The General agreed, on the condition that Marcoh use the stone to heal Lieutenant Havoc first.”

“Oh,” Alphonse says, in a small voice. “He didn’t…”

“He did.”

“Of course he did.” There is no bitterness or anger in Edward’s reply. Just resignation. “He thinks of it as a tool. The way I did, once. What do you do with tools? You use them.”

Alphonse remains quiet for a while, as he starts to roll out a stem for his rose. “General Mustang was the only one of us who didn’t choose to perform human transmutation. It was forced on him, and he lost his sight in exchange. I thought that was unfair.” 

Alphonse’s words seize on one of the many, many difficult considerations that have been gnawing at her ever since Marcoh showed up. Before Riza can reply, the three of them are interrupted by a couple of physical therapists. “So sorry to cut in,” the taller therapist apologizes. “It’s time to transition into your next sessions. We’ll be doing some lower body muscle strengthening this morning.”

Edward starts to ask if they can start ten minutes later, but Riza shakes her head. “I don’t want to interrupt your therapy. I was planning to go out to the courtyard and get some fresh air, anyway.”

“Can you come up and have dinner with us tonight?” Alphonse asks. “You can bring General Mustang too, if he wants to join.”

Riza nods. “I’ll call up to your room tonight and see if you’re up for company.”

“I’ll be right back,” Edward tells the therapists. “I’m just going to walk the Captain out. It’s good practice for me, right?”

Without waiting for a reply, he grabs his cane and joins her as they make their way to the entrance of the therapy gym. “Try not to give your therapists too much of a hard time,” Riza teases. “I think Matthew and Eric are still scarred from working with Havoc.”

“I never give anyone a hard time,” Edward replies, with a straight face. They stop at the entrance, and he falters before turning back to join Alphonse and the therapists. “Captain? Is everything okay with you and the General?” He stops, practically shrinking with discomfort. “When Scar and I showed up, down in the tunnels…”

Riza rests a hand on his shoulder. She is, in equal parts, moved by Edward’s concern, and ashamed that he saw her and Roy like that. That was something he should never have witnessed. The fact that it has weighed on his mind hurts her. She is the adult, and Edward shouldn’t be in a position where he is worrying about her. “Everything will be okay, in time.”

“Good.” Edward’s expression softens in relief. “That’s good.”

“Now, go to your therapy session,” Riza instructs. “And since you haven’t officially retired yet, that’s an order.”

Edward salutes her, grins, and heads back to his therapists and Alphonse. Riza watches him go, leaning on his cane. Their unit’s plan is to deploy to Ishval by the end of the summer at the latest. Edward and Alphonse’s discharge from rehabilitation will precede that. That is a good thing. She and Breda can plan a retirement celebration for the brothers.

Riza takes a deep breath, and returns to the elevator at the end of the hall.

-

She is familiar with the hospital’s courtyard; she used to come here with Havoc. The courtyard at Central General Hospital is the size of a small park, and just as meticulously maintained. It had been autumn the last time she was here with Havoc. The leaves on the trees were a riot of burned orange and deep red before they fell, blanketing the walkways and stone benches. The topiaries and hedges stayed evergreen, but the flowerbeds lay empty and dormant for the season. 

The courtyard looks entirely different now, in the first bloom of spring. Riza walks out along the winding path, savoring the warmth of the sunlight. After the musty warehouse, the stale air in the tunnels underneath Central, and the smoke and ash that blanketed the air on the Promised Day, in front of Central Command - it is such profound relief to get a lungful of fresh, sweet air. To stand under a cloudless blue sky. She stops at every patch of flowers, admiring the butter-yellow trillium blooms and poppies, the vivid purple of the crocuses and hyacinths, and the soft pink tulips.

A spectacular magnolia tree draws her attention, and Riza wanders to stand in its shade. She rests one hand on the trunk of the tree, rough against her palm, and surveys the courtyard. No other patients are out for walks right now, at least not in her area of the courtyard. It is a picture of springtime serenity. 

Sorrow unfurls inside her, unexpected as a sudden rainstorm. She can do nothing but wait for it to pass, and try to make sense of it as she waits. 

“Captain Hawkeye?” 

The voice startles her. Riza almost flinches ( _ why?  _ she thinks, and then remembers that she was unusually reactive to sounds after returning from Ishval, too). She turns to see Falman standing a short distance away. “Lieutenant Falman - does the General need anything?”

“The General does not need anything. He just sent me to check on you. He was worried.” Falman approaches, coming to stand beside her underneath the tree. 

Riza checks her wrist, where she had worn her wristwatch, and finds bare skin underneath her sleeve. She remembers again that her watch had been shattered in the fight with Envy. It was a gift from Grumman, given on the occasion of her twenty-second birthday. She has almost never been without it since then. “Sorry. I’ve been out too long.”

“Not at all. General Mustang said that there was no hurry for us to return. Fuery is reading him some information on city planning, but we can catch up on that later.” Falman folds his arms behind his back. It is a habit that he and the other men on the unit have picked up from Roy, over the years. “Are you feeling well, Captain?”

Riza had missed the way Falman spoke. The even cadence of his voice, and his overly-formal word choice - never a contraction to be seen or heard, in memos, letters, or in verbal conversation. But they have been colleagues and friends for almost eight years now, and the subtle inflection of his voice tells her that he is asking as just that. A friend, not a colleague. 

Be that as it may, it is unlike her to confide in people. As fond as she is of her unit, she keeps her feelings to herself. She always has. Rebecca and Roy have been the sole exceptions to the rule. Even then, there has been a great deal she has withheld from Rebecca, too. The conversation they shared the previous day was the most honest, open talk they’d ever had. 

Over the course of her life, she has shared most of herself with Roy. She made him her home. Her safe space. (That was why it had been so devastating, when she thought that safe space was shattered.) 

The thought occurs to Riza that maybe, maybe, it would be helpful to entrust some parts of her to other people, too. Safe people; trusted friends. 

Even after she makes the decision, the action doesn’t come easily. Riza opens her mouth, and it takes her a few seconds to find the words. “This is what he would miss out on.” She gestures to their surroundings. The lush green grass beneath their feet; the cream-colored magnolias forming a canopy above them. “This is what  _ they  _ would miss out on. It isn’t just about the General’s ability to restore Ishval. He can do that without his vision. Without the Philosopher’s Stone. But without it, he’ll never be able to see anything else ever again, for the rest of his life.” 

Riza folds her arms in front of her, and looks up at the sky. “Nothing great or small. He’ll never see a sunset, or the people of Amestris going about their day to day lives, or us. Havoc will never wake up and go for a morning run along the river again. I remember - I remember how he liked that.”

“He would come into the office in a good mood, and say it started his day right,” Falman recollects. “He brought in pastries from the bakery a few times.”

Riza laughs, and it almost turns into a sob. “Always cherry turnovers.”

Falman waits with her until she is ready to continue.

“I feel selfish for thinking that the General should have declined Marcoh’s offer on principle, because of what the Philosopher’s Stone really is,” Riza confesses. “I should be happy that the General and Havoc will get their lives back on track. I feel like a bad subordinate, and a worse friend, for having the moral reservations I do.”

Falman weighs his reply before speaking, as he always does. “I have served with you for the better part of a decade, Captain Hawkeye. I do not believe you are a bad subordinate, or a bad friend. You are deeply principled, and that is not a bad thing. In fact, that is something that General Mustang and the whole unit values about you.” 

Riza steps into the sunshine, trying to warm herself. “Edward said that the General thinks of the stone as a tool to be used. I wish I could be that pragmatic about it. I’m pragmatic about most things. But I think of everyone just before they died, sacrificed for the creation of the stone, and…” She shudders. “It makes it worse that Marcoh created that stone from the lives of Ishvalans, of all people.”

“What do you think should be done with that Philosopher’s Stone, Captain Hawkeye?”

She hadn’t expected that question. Riza gives it some thought. “If we could just use the power of the stone itself to rebuild Ishval, that seems like the best option. But I don’t think it works like that.” 

Falman frowns, considering. “Barring that, would you want it destroyed?”

“I would want it held, and used, someday, on something to better Ishval.” 

“Dr. Marcoh believes that this would better Ishval,” Falman points out. 

Riza shrugs, frustrated. “What makes Marcoh the person who has that say on it? He’s as responsible for creating that atrocity as we are. He doesn’t own the Ishvalan lives held inside the stone. I wish…” She stops, and then plunges ahead. “I wish he hadn’t come here. We were navigating a way forward without him. And again, I feel selfish to wish that.” 

“May I attempt to sum up the situation?”

“Yes. Good luck. I can barely make sense of how I feel about it myself.” 

“You find the use of the Philosopher’s Stone for one’s personal benefit repellent on principle. Even more so in this situation because this specific stone was created from Ishvalan lives, and the General would be benefiting from the use of the stone, despite--” Falman stops abruptly. He struggles with the next words. “Despite ending many hundreds of Ishvalan lives himself.”

Riza winces at the brutally honest assessment. Part of her regrets making him say it out loud. The unit admires, respects, and even loves Roy. They never saw him in Ishval. They never witnessed the things he did firsthand. “Yes.”

“Fuery, Breda, and I discussed matters with the General after you departed. On the phone, Havoc told Breda that he did not want to lower the chances of the General making a full recovery with the help of the stone. Lieutenant Breda passed this sentiment on to the General. General Mustang reiterated that he would be all right if Dr. Marcoh had to use the full power of the stone on Havoc. He called Havoc back and spoke to him himself.”

“I know he’s being honest when he says that,” Riza replies. “That’s the kind of person he is.” 

“The General really is doing this for Havoc, Captain Hawkeye,” Falman says quietly. “I believe this is a line that he would not cross normally. He understands why it is distasteful. But I believe he would do anything for his subordinates.”

Because they are more than just subordinates, to Roy. Riza understands that. 

“I know.” The weariness of her restless night begins to catch up to her. “If he wasn’t like that, he wouldn’t be the General.”

“Major General Armstrong would say that General Mustang cares too much. To the point of making uncomfortable decisions, and compromising moral standards. With that being said, I trust, respect, and admire a commanding officer who cares too much, over one who does not care enough.” 

The words strike home. 

(She once knew and loved a man who did not care enough.) 

Riza pushes a stray lock of hair behind her ear. Her hand trembles slightly. “That’s true, Lieutenant.” 

Falman’s concern is apparent. “I hope this helped somewhat, Captain.”

“It did.” Riza looks up at him. “I’m glad that you’re coming with us to Ishval. I’m surprised that General Armstrong released you and Major Miles, especially considering her recent loss. I have empathy for her, but I worried that she wouldn’t give you leave to rejoin our unit.”

“I pleaded my case for close to an hour. General Armstrong gave me leave to remain in Ishval for one year, and not a day longer than that. Under the condition that I do not even request to be released from her command for the next four years, at least.” Falman pulls out his pocket datebook and flips to August 31, 1916. “She circled my return date in red pen.”

Even the red circle looks ominous. General Armstrong had pressed down so hard with the pen that it almost tore the page. “We’ll put you on a train back to Amestris two days early.” Riza pats him on the arm. “Just in case.”

“Thank you, Captain,” Falman says fervently. 

“Are you happy?” Riza asks. “Up north? General Armstrong certainly seems to value your presence at Fort Briggs.”

“I am. The Briggs soldiers are a good bunch.” Falman shifts from foot to foot, and he turns a little red.

That is unlike him, and Riza regards him curiously. “What is it?”

“I met someone,” Falman says, in a rush. “On my first day up North. My first five minutes, actually. I bumped into her at the train station and made her spill her coffee all over herself.”

Riza’s jaw drops. In all the years she has known Falman, he has rarely ever gone on dates. “You have a girlfriend?” 

Falman rubs the back of his neck. “A fiancee. I proposed just before our forces came to Central. I know it has only been seven months, but…” He smiles, more broadly than Riza has ever seen him smile. “When you know, you know.” 

After the tremendous emotional strain of the past days, it is such a joy to hear good news. Riza hugs him, and he pats her on the shoulder. “What’s her name? Is she going to be okay with being long-distance for a year?”

“Her name is Anna.” Falman fishes out his wallet, and the photograph of him and Anna, tucked inside. She has black hair cut into a bob, and a sweet smile. She is almost as tall as Falman. “I think she would be interested in joining us in Ishval, if the General is amenable to the idea. She is a physician who attends to the health concerns of women, so I am sure there will be a need for her services.”

“I’m so happy for you.” Bittersweet emotion swells up in Riza again. Falman is engaged, and will move back North after a year. Edward and Alphonse are leaving the military and heading home to Resembool. Grumman will be inaugurated as Fuhrer-President of Amestris in a matter of weeks. She and the rest of the unit are relocating to Ishval, to begin the project of a lifetime. Havoc will be with them again. The years have marched forward, and change is upon all of them. 

And she and Roy are on the verge of something new, as well. 

“Captain,” Falman begins, as if reading her mind. “If it is not impertinent to ask…” 

“It isn’t,” Riza says. “It’s complicated, though.”

A familiar bark prevents her from saying anything further. Riza whirls around, and Fuery is coming down the path, being pulled by Black Hayate on his lead. Roy and Breda follow, with Breda guiding the General. Black Hayate strains against his lead, tail wagging furiously, eager to come rushing to her. “Delivery for Captain Hawkeye!” Fuery calls, releasing the lead. 

“Hayate!” Riza sinks to her knees and holds her arms open, and Black Hayate sprints forward and leaps into her arms. He’s wagging his tail so hard his entire body trembles with the force of it, and he presses his cold nose to her cheeks, giving her kisses. Riza laughs and hugs him close, burying her face in his fur. “Oh, I missed you so much, my good boy.” 

“See?” Fuery asks Breda. “That’s so cute, isn’t it? Dogs are great, Lieutenant Breda.”

“Dogs are a menace,” Breda corrects. “That dog is the only good dog in Amestris.”

“Factually incorrect,” Falman counters. “I have read of several Amestrian dogs that have performed heroic deeds.” 

Fuery bought Black Hayate’s red ball with him. For a blissful while, Riza plays catch with her dog, giving him liberal amounts of praise and pets every time he returns the ball, while Falman, Breda, Fuery, and Roy converse. 

Riza throws the ball, and Black Hayate takes off after it like a rocket. He finds it quickly and comes racing back to place it politely in her hands. “Wonderful,” Riza praises, ruffling the soft fur at his neck. 

Black Hayate looks at something over her shoulder and barks, his tail wagging. Riza turns to see Roy, who had carefully made his way over to them. “Hello, Second Lieutenant.” He bends to pet Hayate, who nuzzles against his palm. Fuery must have stopped at Roy’s apartment as well, to bring him a change of clothes. The General looks more like himself, having discarded the hospital clothing in favor of tan pants, a long-sleeved black shirt, and his ubiquitous dark coat. It is a considerably less formal look than the one he typically favors, and Riza realizes that it may have been an easier choice due to the lack of buttons on the shirt. 

Riza hands Roy Hayate’s ball, and he takes it, with some apprehension. “If I throw it to the east, I won’t knock out an innocent civilian, will I?”

“No. We have the place to ourselves for now.” 

“I’m trusting that you’re not trying to destroy my reputation.” Roy throws the ball, and Black Hayate goes barreling after it. 

Riza smiles as she watches her dog search for the ball underneath a hedge. “No cries of indignation. You’re fine. I don’t think Hayate is thrilled about having to flatten himself into a pancake to get underneath that hedge, though.” 

“He might forgive me if I share some of my lunch with him.” Roy hesitates. “It’s nice to hear you sounding so happy. It’s been...a long while.”

“It has,” Riza agrees. Close to a year. Things had taken a turn for the worse last spring, with Scar’s arrival in East City and the murder of Nina Tucker, and events steadily devolved from there. Their unit hasn’t shared genuine, unburdened lightheartedness and purely joyful laughter in a long time. 

They stand together in silence, before Roy turns to her. “Do you understand why I made my choice?”

“I do.”

They’re looking in the same direction, at Black Hayate underneath the hedge, even though Roy can’t see him. “I know that it’s a questionable choice. I know that there are some who would find it ruthless to use the stone at all. Especially this stone, out of all of them. I know that I’ll be judged for what I’m choosing to do. Justifiably so.” Roy trails off. “It’ll be more guilt to carry, but I can carry it. I can’t choose to do nothing to help Havoc, while knowing that the choice, the opportunity, was mine.” 

“I know you, General. I know that would haunt you for the rest of your days.” Riza stops just short of saying the rest. That ultimately, she doesn’t want that for him. Roy already has enough to haunt him. 

“Thank you for understanding, Captain.” Roy gives her a small smile. “You always do.”

Black Hayate comes trotting back to them, triumphant, and they take turns tossing the ball for the dog to retrieve.

-

The weekend passes in a blur of work. The unit spends almost all of their time at the hospital, immersed in planning. Between them, Riza and Breda fill a thick spiral-bound notebook with details of the emerging reconstruction plans. Fuery sets up a telephone on Roy’s bedside table, and the two of them waste no time in reaching out to allies sympathetic to the cause.

One unit (as competent as they are), plus Major Miles and Scar, won’t be sufficient to rebuild an entire country, let alone a single city, in a reasonable timeframe. However, determining the right number of Amestrian reconstruction forces proves to be challenging. 

“We shouldn’t have too many members of the Amestrian military there, right?” Breda asks. “That might be uncomfortable for the Ishvalan survivors.”

“That’s a good point.” Roy paces the length of the room, trailing his fingers against the wall to steady himself. “At the same time, we can’t expect the Ishvalan survivors to do the kind of heavy labor that will be necessary for many aspects of the project. Many survivors might be too old, or young, or disabled, to work.”

“Let me check the estimates of the Ishvalan population again.” Riza rifles through her notes. “We could have half as many soldiers as we do survivors, or less.”

Fuery speaks up unexpectedly. “I think less would be fine, General Mustang, Captain Hawkeye. Even if it takes us longer to complete the reconstruction. We should personally know everyone going to Ishval, so that we know they’re trustworthy with the survivors.”

“Astute, Second Lieutenant. Quality over quantity.” Roy looks pleased with Fuery’s input. “It’s the same principle I had when I formed this unit.” 

They decide on that course of action. Roy secures Major Armstrong and two of his soldiers, Maria Ross and Denny Brosh, as well as Charlie and his old unit from Ishval. Riza calls West City Command, and General Hall agrees to join them in Ishval before she even finishes her sentence. 

“Knox and his family, and Dr. Marcoh, are coming too,” Roy updates Riza, after she returns from a picnic dinner with Rebecca, shared out in the courtyard. “Falman’s fiancee Anna as well.”

“Dr. Knox’s son is a doctor too, isn’t he?” Riza asks. “So we’ll have three doctors, and all of us soldiers are trained in basic field medicine.”

“We’ll have four more doctors joining us. I just confirmed that with Dr. Knox too.” Roy drums his fingers on the windowsill. “Two are out at the medical school in East City, one is at the South City medical school, and one is at the medical school here. Carver Spaziani, Scott Barrick, Quinley Jeffries, and Stanley Carnahan. All of them are able and willing to do physical labor as well.” 

Riza notes the names in her second notebook. “We’re on our way to staffing a small hospital, then. The Ishvalan survivors likely haven’t been able to access good medical care for the past years, and this will help address any health issues they have.” 

“Spaziani, Barrick, Jeffries, and Carnahan aren’t those kinds of doctors.” Roy pauses. “They’re psychiatrists. They help with mental and emotional concerns.”

Riza’s pen stills on the page. “Oh.”

Black Hayate looks up from the corner of the room, from his spot resting on his dog bed. The General had spoken to the charge nurse on their floor, and requested that Black Hayate receive permission to stay with her.  _ Captain Hawkeye is a veteran of the Ishvalan conflict,  _ Roy explained.  _ The dog assists her. _

“Knox and I were talking, and we thought that… it might be necessary, for the survivors. Since they’ll be back in a place that was once their vibrant homeland, and is now being rebuilt from the ground up.” 

“I can’t imagine,” Riza murmurs. The survivors are returning to a land where most of their family, most of their friends, had been slaughtered. Where the streets they once knew and loved ran red with blood. 

“It might help them cope with the shock and grief. With the adjustment.” Roy angles himself toward the darkening window. “It could be helpful to the soldiers, too.”

It is difficult to breathe. This is the first time they have acknowledged what returning to Ishval could mean for them. It is easy to be brave during the daytime hours, and when they have one another to talk to in the evenings. They can focus on rebuilding a prosperous nation for the survivors. But late at night, Riza has lain awake for hours, curled up around her pillow, clutching it tight, wracked with terror and the memories. It leaves a dull ache inside her to know that Roy has been experiencing the same thing. 

The confession presses against the confines of her, yearning to be let out.  _ I’m worried about what returning to Ishval will do to me,  _ Riza wants to say.  _ I’m scared, Roy.  _

“That was thoughtful, General,” is all she says, instead. She can’t say the rest yet. She can barely even allow herself to think it. “Thank you.” 

Roy turns to her, and for a split second, Riza sees her own emotions echoed in his face. She is tempted to close the professional distance between them. To stand beside him and rest her head against his shoulder, and let him hold her close. She remains still. She isn’t fully ready for that yet, and she won’t push herself. 

“The well-being of the survivors and the soldiers is my responsibility, now.” The weight of that responsibility has already settled over the General’s shoulders, and it is evident in the new lines around the corners of his eyes. “I intend to take that seriously.” 

“We’re in good hands with you, sir.” The words slip out, unguarded. Riza blushes at her lapse, and opens the city planning book Fuery had left on Roy’s bedside table. “I’m going to start reading chapter two, about ensuring a reliable water supply. Let me know if you would like me to reread any segments for you.”

-

Breda updates them at seven-hundred hours on Sunday morning that Havoc has just boarded the train to Central, and is due to arrive at nineteen-thirty hours. “I know that we have work to do, but what do you think of taking tonight for a sort of welcome-back party, General?”

“I like that idea.” Roy rummages in the pocket of his coat and withdraws his wallet. He would have casually tossed it over at Breda once, letting the Second Lieutenant catch it. Now he just holds it out, not wanting to take the risk of hitting Falman or Fuery in the face with a bad throw. “Take this, and get everything you need on your way to the station.”

Riza passes the news on to Rebecca when she drops in later for a before-work visit, meeting her and Black Hayate out in the courtyard. “Havoc’s coming back to Central tonight, and the unit’s having a little welcome-back party. I think you should come.”

“I’ll ask the old man for a night off and stop by, then,” Rebecca says, rather offhandedly, as Riza expected she would. 

“Good,” Riza replies, keeping her face carefully free of expression. 

Rebecca narrows her eyes. “What’s that neutral look all about, Hawkeye?” 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Catalina.” Riza tosses a stick for Black Hayate to fetch. “You should wear that sleeveless red wrap dress tonight.”

“Fine.” Rebecca elbows her. “But I’m bringing a dress and some makeup over for you, too.”

-

Riza and Black Hayate return to the hospital room to find that Roy has company. Gracia sits in the chair near the window, and Elicia perches at the foot of Roy’s hospital bed, clutching a children’s book with a duck on the cover. The little girl’s jaw drops when she notices Black Hayate, and she abruptly leaves off telling Roy about the ducklings she saw at the park. “What a nice puppy!”

“His name is Black Hayate, and he is very nice.” Riza smiles at Elicia. She’s grown since she last saw her, and she is adorable in her bright orange dress. “Would you like to say hello? Hello, Gracia. Hello, Elicia.” 

Gracia waves hello at her. “Why don’t you hold out your hand first, sweetheart, like you did when you met Tabitha’s cat?”

Elicia leans down and politely offers her hand to Black Hayate. “Nice to meet you, Hayate.”

Black Hayate licks her hand once, with equal politeness. Elicia strokes his head, glowing with adoration. “Hayate, read with me!” She offers her book to Roy. “Please read, Uncle Roy?”

“I forgot how to read,” Roy replies easily. “I’ll learn again, but until then, you can read to me, okay?”

Elicia giggles. “You’re silly.” 

She begins reading anyway. Roy listens attentively, propping his chin up in his hand. Riza tears her gaze away from them with difficulty, and finds Gracia watching her with silent, compassionate understanding. 

(As she would sometimes, on those long-ago, happier nights, when Riza had been a Lieutenant and Roy had been a Colonel, and they had dinner with Hughes and Gracia, and then little Elicia. Riza would never admit to the envy that rose inside her when she looked at Gracia. Innocent, untainted Gracia, who had never taken a life. Who had the right to live in peace and happiness with her husband and daughter.  _ If I had made different choices,  _ Riza thought,  _ I could have the life you have.  _ The thought made her ache.) 

Gracia rises from her chair, joining Riza on the other side of the room in order to let Elicia, Roy, and Hayate enjoy their story without being interrupted by their conversation. “I’m glad you’re okay, Riza. Roy called us to check in, the night you were in surgery. He was terrified.”

“I’m glad that you and Elicia are all right, too.” Carefully applied cosmetics conceal the bags under Gracia’s eyes, and Riza’s heart goes out to her. She’s struck with shame, and guilt, because she has Roy. And Gracia - the woman she once envied for having it all - no longer has Hughes. She glances over her shoulder at Elicia. “How is she coping?”

“She’s all right during the day, but she’s having nightmares again.” Gracia rubs her chest absentmindedly, as if it hurts. “We’ll get through it. It hasn’t even been a week.” 

“Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help. I’m happy to bring Hayate over for visits.” 

“Thank you.” Gracia smiles. “I think she’d like that. I would too, honestly. I don’t know if I ever mentioned it to you, but I had a dog growing up. She was my best friend.” 

“I don’t think you did.” Riza looks at Elicia, Roy, and Black Hayate again. Black Hayate has been invited up onto the hospital bed, and Elicia has her arm wrapped around him. “We’ll be around until late summer. Hopefully by then, she would have forgotten about this.”

“I hope.” Gracia wraps her arms around herself. Riza recognizes the gesture as her own former comfort gesture; one that she still slips into when she is particularly lonely or distressed. “What’s happening in late summer? Are you and Roy going back to East City Command?”

“We’re moving back East, but not to East City Command. Our unit and some other volunteers are deploying to Ishval to begin rebuilding the region.”

“Oh. Yes.” Gracia stammers on her husband’s name. “Maes mentioned that was one of Roy’s priorities for the future.”

In another world, Hughes would have been her counterpart, as one of Fuhrer-President Roy Mustang’s right-hand men. He would have worked alongside them on all of these plans. His keen intelligence would have been such an asset. That knowledge hangs between her and Gracia, and Riza can only nod. “It’s something the General feels strongly about.”

“You said you’re taking volunteers with you?” Gracia takes a deep breath, drawing herself up to her full height. “I would like to come along to help. With Elicia, of course.”

“I--” Riza turns toward Roy, but he is still absorbed in Elicia’s story. 

Gracia’s expression is resolute. “I was a teacher, before Elicia was born. I’m sure you’ll need at least a few of those. I’m trained to teach primary and secondary school.”

There are two pages of her notebook dedicated to the establishment of primary schools, secondary schools, and institutes of higher education, but the unit hasn’t even begun to discuss the recruitment of teachers at those schools. “It’ll be a big change for you and Elicia.” Riza remembers Hughes mentioning that Gracia had been born and raised in Central. “Haven’t you always lived here? Ishval will be different in every way. It won’t be easy, especially in the first few months of the reconstruction.”

“Different is good. I think…” Gracia wipes at her eyes discreetly. “After everything, that would be the best thing for both of us. Elicia’s told me that she doesn’t like the playgrounds or parks, or our apartment, anymore, because her daddy should be there with us. I’ve been thinking about moving to East City as it is.” 

Riza hadn’t considered that. That Central City, even their own home, would be a constant, painful reminder of all that Gracia and Elicia shared with Hughes. 

“Maes would have supported Roy and your unit in this.” Gracia’s voice remains steady, this time. “So I will, too. Please let me do this, Riza.” 

Her tone brooks no further argument, and Riza places a hand on her shoulder. “We would be happy to have you. I’ll fill you in on some details.” 

Gracia and Elicia stay until it’s time for Elicia to head to her playdate with her friend. “We’ll come back to visit on Tuesday,” Gracia promises. “We visited Ed and Al this morning, and Elicia wants to bring Al some of her stuffed animals.” 

Elicia hovers by the hospital bed, reluctant to leave. She kisses Black Hayate on the head and pats him, and then she’s distracted by the bandages around Riza’s neck. “Are you hurt?” she asks. She rubs at her own neck, her little brows drawing together with worry.

“I was hurt, but I’ll be better,” Riza reassures her. “I have a friend who helped me, and the nurses and doctors are helping me get better, too.”

“Okay.” Elicia beckons her closer, and then presses a kiss to her cheek. “Feel better soon.”

Riza strokes Elicia’s hair. “I will. Thank you.” 

Elicia takes Roy’s hand and holds onto it. “Uncle Roy,” she says, and her words come out rather chiding. “Learn how to read again.”

Roy laughs. “I’ll try my best.”

Elicia and Gracia leave, Elicia clinging to her mother’s hand, and Riza watches them go. Black Hayate senses her sorrow, and presses close to her side. 

“I’m worried about Elicia. I think she likes me, and I’m afraid that she’ll miss me when I’m gone.” Roy rubs his eyes wearily. “She misses Hughes every day. I don’t want her to have more to be sad about.”

Riza sits beside him. “I don’t think you’ll have to worry about that, General,” she starts. “Gracia and I had a conversation…” 

-

Riza is grateful that Fuery and Falman are already present when Rebecca arrives at eighteen-thirty hours, bearing a garment bag and a purse loaded with makeup. Her best friend is markedly cool in her acknowledgement of the General. Riza can see that Roy notices, though he greets Rebecca courteously. 

“What do you think about this one?” Rebecca zips her into the dress, in the confines of the private bathroom attached to their hospital room. “I thought that the lilac was cute. Very spring-y.”

“I like it.” Riza brushes her fingers against the thick ring of bandages around her neck. “I don’t think these go with the dress, though.”

“They should make colored bandages,” Rebecca muses. “It wouldn’t look bad. It’d be like a choker.” 

They rejoin the rest of the unit in the hospital room. Rebecca updates them all on the handover of power from Fuhrer Bradley’s administration to Grumman and his staff, and the status of the Amestrian civilians affected by the Promised Day. “The old man is busy putting out fires all day.” She leans against the wall, fiddling with the ends of her long side braid. “The surviving members of Bradley’s senior staff say that they had no idea about Bradley’s true nature, even though they definitely did. None of them are ratting each other out. So Grumman and our staff are having to come up with reasons to arrest them so they can’t cause further trouble. They’ve set their lawyers on us, and the lawyers are out for blood. They’re trying to drag Grumman’s name through the mud in all the papers and ruin the message we put out about how the senior staff were the ones who schemed against Bradley. It’s a nightmare.”

Fuery winces. “Honestly, General, it sounds like you dodged a bullet.” 

Roy crosses his arms over his chest, and an expression of satisfaction flits across his face. “I’m happy with what our unit has been working on, in comparison.”

Breda and Havoc arrive shortly afterward, Breda with two large brown bags in hand. Havoc looks worn out from the more than twelve-hour train trip from Womiob to Central City, but his face is alight with joy as he wheels himself into the room and regards the unit. “Huh, I never thought I’d miss you guys so much. It feels like it’s been years, not months.” He grasps Riza’s hand, and his grip is strong and warm. “It’s good to see you up, Hawkeye. We were worried.”

“It’s nice to have you back, Lieutenant Havoc,” Fuery beams, as Falman shakes Havoc’s hand. 

“Never thought you’d miss us so much, huh?” Roy smirks. “We’re the best part of your life.”

“No offense, General, but you’re not pretty enough to be the best part of my life.” Havoc smiles at Rebecca. Riza notices, amused, that her best friend is trying not to melt. “Hey, Catalina. It’s great to see you in person after all our phone chats.”

“Phone chats?” Riza whispers to Rebecca, as Havoc congratulates Falman on his engagement. “You never mentioned phone chats. We’re going to talk about this tomorrow.” 

Breda passes around hot sandwiches, fries, and chips for everyone. Havoc dives into his sandwich with a moan of ecstasy. (Riza nudges Rebecca, who steps on her foot.) “This is so good. No one makes a steak sandwich like this in Womiob.”

“Anna makes a roast pork sandwich with a nice citrus sauce,” Falman says. “The two of us will make it for the team when we arrive in Ishval. That reminds me - we should add citrus to the list of crops that will thrive in the desert.” 

“I got wine, too, and sparkling cider for you, Hawkeye.” Breda pulls out the bottles. “It’s good to hear about the citruses. I don’t know what kind of demand there’s going to be for guavas and dates in terms of exports.”

Fuery starts to pour out the drinks. “White for you, Falman? Red for Breda, Havoc, and the General? Are you okay to drink sparkling cider, Captain Hawkeye? I’m sorry - I don’t know what kind of wine you prefer, Lieutenant Catalina.”

“White, please! And ooh, that’s a nice Riesling you bought, Breda.” 

“I’ll try the sparkling cider,” Riza says. “I’ll have some wine, if the cider’s too uncomfortable.” 

“I’ll have the sparkling cider as well,” Roy adds. Riza notes that as a departure from the usual, but then she’s distracted by Havoc trying to call Black Hayate over to feed him the crust of his sandwich. 

The hours pass in the contented haze brought on by good company. Riza looks between each member of her unit and Rebecca, basking in their happiness as they share drinks, fries and chips, and stories from their time in the east, the north, the south, and the west. Every so often, she glances at Roy, leaning against the wall. His posture is relaxed, and he radiates a sort of quiet contentment that she hasn’t seen from him in a year. She can tell that he is savoring this time as deeply as she is. 

They could have lost everything, on the Promised Day. Amestris, and their hopes for a brighter future for the country and its people. They could have lost their friends, and each other. Against all odds, they still have it all. The future is theirs to mold. 

It takes an effort for Riza to keep her eyes off Roy, when he smiles; when he laughs at the unit’s stories; when he preens, self-satisfied, at his own quips. This is the man she remembers, the commanding officer and best friend she trusts and loves, and it is a staggering relief to see him again. 

(Riza is faintly conscious of what she is doing. Piece by piece, replacing the troubled Colonel she had grown so familiar with, the Colonel consumed by darkness and rage, with the old Roy. She can’t forget what happened on the Promised Day. She shouldn’t forget. But at the same time, she doesn’t want that to be the first thing she thinks of, when she thinks of Roy.)

Hannah pokes her head in at twenty-two thirty to inform them that visiting hours have ended for the night. She refuses to be bribed with a bag of chips to extend visiting hours for the Captain and the General. “They’re salt and vinegar chips, Hannah,” Havoc pleads. “Come on.” Hannah remains unmoved.

The unit and Rebecca clean up the hospital room, before reluctantly filing out. Havoc lingers for a moment. “Thanks for doing this, General,” he says. “I would have made the best of things as a civilian, but I know that this is where I was meant to be. I’ll team up with Ed for physical therapy starting tomorrow, and I’ll be ready to deploy to Ishval at the end of summer.”

“You’re a good man, Lieutenant Havoc,” Roy replies simply. “You deserve it.”

“Dr. Marcoh will be here at seven-thirty tomorrow morning,” Riza reminds him. 

“Ugh. I’ll have to get used to waking up at military hours again.” Havoc lifts a hand in farewell to them. “Night, General, Captain.”

Riza watches him go. Rebecca and Breda had been waiting for him outside. The door shuts behind them, leaving her alone with Roy. 

She smooths her hands over her skirt, and calls Black Hayate to her side with a wordless gesture. Her dog trots to stand beside her, and Riza pets him in order to calm herself. This is the closest thing their unit has had to one of their old nights out in a year. It reminds her of the countless nights out they shared in the past. They would drink too much, and Roy would walk her home.

( _ Let me take you home, Lieutenant,  _ he would say. The words lived in the space between a request and an order. His tone drove Riza to distraction, as she imagined what else she’d like to have him say to her.  _ Yes, sir,  _ she said.  _ Yes, please,  _ she thought, reflexively. Roy’s hands brushed against her shoulders, against her arms, as he helped her into her coat.) 

At least once during every one of those walks, Riza considered inviting him into her apartment. With a look, or with a simple request to come in, or with her fingers wrapped around his wrist. Every one of those thoughts, every one of those moments of temptation, was quickly stifled by her own common sense.  _ He’s your commanding officer. You can’t cross that line.  _

They have shared this hospital room with a surprising lack of tension, over the past couple of days. Like roommates; like colleagues; like nothing more than a commanding officer and his subordinate. Now, there is a subtle shift, reminiscent of that stretch of weeks between the time she realized Roy had feelings for her, and their forced separation before the Promised Day. Riza is unsure of how to handle it. This isn’t the right time. 

“Well,” she says, and immediately regrets her own awkwardness. “I’m going to get ready for bed.”

“All right, Captain.” There is a touch of melancholy in the words. “Tonight was good, wasn’t it?”

Riza picks up on the guilt that underlies the question. She doesn’t have to prompt him for an explanation. She crosses the room to stand by his side, and rests a hand on his arm. “It was. He would be happy for you, General.” 

Roy places his hand on hers, before letting her go. 

-

Dr. Marcoh arrives at half past seven-hundred hours the following morning. The unit offers to remain by Havoc’s side during the healing, but Havoc shakes his head. “No offense, but if this doesn’t work, I don’t want to try to stand up and fall on my face in front of you guys.” He softens the words with a grin. Breda calls him an idiot anyway. 

The attitude of the nurses on the floor regarding the Philosopher’s Stone ranges from skepticism to distrust and disbelief. Iris leaves a pair of crutches by Havoc’s side. “Use these when you stand up from your chair,” she advises. “The muscles in your legs have probably atrophied over these past months, and you’ll need the extra support to stand.”

Riza and the rest of the unit waits outside the room. Breda paces back and forth until Maria goes to talk with him. Falman stands still, arms folded behind his back, but nervousness is etched onto his features. Fuery pets Black Hayate, which soothes the Second Lieutenant in the same way it soothes her. Roy keeps straightening the collar of his shirt. Her own nerves have been tied in knots since she woke up at five-hundred hours this morning.

It takes an eternity for Dr. Marcoh to join them in the hallway. “Well?” Roy asks sharply, turning toward the heavy, slightly shuffling tread of the doctor’s footsteps. “Was it successful?”

They all hear the click of Havoc’s crutches against the floor. Roy’s fingers close around the sleeve of her cardigan, missing her hand. Havoc emerges from the hospital room, supporting himself with one crutch underneath each arm, and the broad grin on his face makes Riza’s eyes fill up with tears.

\- 

“Is there any way to tell how much energy is left in that thing?” Havoc whispers to Dr. Marcoh, as Riza helps the General over to the chair near the window. “Do you see any change in shininess, or anything? Is the stone smaller?”

Dr. Marcoh examines it. “There’s really no difference. We’ll just have to see. All of you, please wait at the far end of the room, and close your eyes. There will be a bright flash of light when I activate the stone’s power, and it can be temporarily blinding.”

Falman, Breda, Fuery, and Havoc wish Roy luck, clapping him on the shoulders. They retreat to one corner of the room, and Riza alone hesitates to obey the order. She should be at his side. 

“It’s all right, Captain,” Roy murmurs. “Go. I’ll be fine.”

She joins her unit. Reluctantly, she closes her eyes. The flash of light is searing enough that she still senses it. Riza starts toward the General’s side before she even consciously makes the decision to open her eyes, let alone move. 

Roy lifts a hand up to shield himself from the light streaming in through the window, grimacing with discomfort. “That hurts.”

Riza lowers the blinds at once, as the rest of the unit approaches. Dr. Marcoh leans forward in his chair. “Did it work, General Mustang? Can you see?”

Roy doesn’t reply immediately. He blinks a few times, as if trying to clear his vision. He gazes at her; at the unit. His eyes are dark again, free of the silvery cast that has hovered over them since the Promised Day. There is something about the way he regards them that is different, though. 

“Yes,” the General says. “But not clearly. And not one-hundred and eighty degrees, either. There’s a sort of clouding at the edges.” 

“Can you read the headline of this paper?” Marcoh grabs the copy of the Central City Times from the bedside table and holds it up. 

“No.” 

Marcoh hands the paper to Roy. “How about now?”

“No.” Roy holds the paper about six inches from his face. “I can see it now - the headline, at least. I can’t really make out the smaller print..”

Marcoh stands. “I thought this might happen. Knox is waiting for us at the ophthalmologist’s office on the ninth floor. Let’s take you in for an assessment.”

“General.” Havoc’s face is white as a sheet. “I’m--”

“Don’t you dare apologize, Lieutenant. Get yourself upstairs and admitted to the rehabilitation ward.” Roy rises. The steps he takes are cautious, as if his depth perception has been altered. “The Captain and I will be back later.”

Riza goes to his side, and although Roy has some vision, he takes her arm.

-

Riza spends an hour in the waiting area of the ophthalmology department. The minutes tick by slowly, and her back grows stiff with tension. Finally, she leaves her spot by the door to the ophthalmology assessment center, and goes to stand near the window, seeking to distract herself. The window has a lovely view of the hospital’s courtyard, and she can see the magnolia tree that the unit stood under on Friday morning. 

The door opens, and Riza turns quickly, in time to see Roy make his way out of the office. He walks unassisted, and he squints at her. “Don’t come over here,” he instructs. “I want to see how I do on my own.” 

Riza waits by the window, and Roy joins her. His pace is a little slower than it had been before the Promised Day, but more confident than it was when he was totally blind. He exhales a small, relieved sigh when he reaches the window, resting his hands on the sill. They are still bandaged, and his physician has ordered a course of physical therapy, beginning tomorrow. She remains quiet, knowing that the General will share the results of his evaluation when he is ready.

“The healing was incomplete,” Roy says, after a little while. “Everything I see, both near and far, is blurry. My peripherals are shot. I’m down to one-thirty degrees from one-eighty. Between the acuity and the peripherals, the doctor defined my current status as visually impaired.”

Riza swallows over her dry throat. “Will glasses help?”

“He’s ordered a special pair of corrective lenses, but that will only offset the damage so much. Even with correction, I won’t be able to see at more acuity than twenty sixty-three. Without correction, I’m pretty hopeless. Everything’s a blur unless I’m six inches or fewer from it.”

Understanding sinks in. Roy would need to be twenty feet away to see something that she could see at sixty-three feet. “They did the test with the Snellen chart?”

“Yeah.” Roy pinches the bridge of his nose. “The doctor mentioned that there are magnifying lamps I can use for reading reports, along with my new glasses. I think it’s safe to say that I can’t be trusted with a gun again, though. Or to use ranged Flame Alchemy without you to guide me. At least we won’t need either of those things in Ishval.”

“Are you disappointed, General?” Riza asks, even though she thinks she knows the answer. “At this outcome?”

Roy’s reply comes immediately. “No. It’ll be a little bit of an adjustment, but it won’t slow me down.”

“I’m glad.” Riza rests a hand on his arm. Roy’s gaze drops to her hand, and she withdraws, a little self-conscious of how close they are standing. 

Roy clears his throat, and his gaze lingers on her. He’s looked at her intently before, like he’s drinking her in. But he has never studied her like this, as if trying to memorize every minute detail of her. The sweep of her bangs, her dark eyelashes, the light dusting of freckles across her cheekbones. Her lips. “Hawkeye,” he says.

Riza’s face feels warm. “Yes, sir?”

“You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, in my entire life.” 

Roy says it so matter-of-factly, as if he is telling her that the sky is blue or the grass is green.

Riza has been complimented on her looks before. It isn’t new to her. Every man she has ever been with has called her beautiful, gorgeous, perfect.  _ Roy  _ has complimented her before.  _ You look lovely, Hawkeye,  _ he’s told her, on several occasions. She’s accepted these compliments with a blush, or a smile. None of them have ever left her speechless, until now. 

“Thank you.” Riza stammers, once, on the words.

“Come on.” Roy turns away, and he puts his hands in the pockets of his coat. The flush on his cheeks betrays how flustered he is. “Let’s get back to work. We’re getting a late start on the day.”

They return downstairs, to rejoin the rest of their unit.

* * *

_to be continued_

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you so much to everybody who left comments and kudos on the previous chapter! I enjoy reading them so much and I treasure every one. 
> 
> I apologize in advance for long author's notes this time!
> 
> The beautifully talented artists @brancadoodles and @chewytran have created a couple of evocative and lovely pieces of fanart for this fic. Please check them out on tumblr by searching @brancadoodles and @chewytran! 
> 
> Ishval has been modeled, in size, structure, and former population, after Syria. 
> 
> I think Riza's attitude toward the Philosopher's Stone in this fic is the biggest departure from canon-Riza. In the scene in fmab, Riza appears happy with Dr. Marcoh's suggestion to use the Stone to heal Roy. I hope that this departure from canon-Riza is an understandable narrative choice, considering delicate-Riza's longstanding distrust and aversion to alchemy based on her own experiences in her youth, and with Shou Tucker. At the same time, recognizing that she also has a few alchemists in her life that she is very close to, like Roy, Ed, and Al. Exploring delicate-Riza's complicated feelings toward alchemy and alchemists has been one of the many things I've enjoyed about writing this story, even though it has no explicit basis in canon. 
> 
> Full disclosure - I personally hated the choice made in canon for Roy to regain his vision, using a Philosopher's Stone created from the sacrifice of thousands of innocent Ishvalan lives. That is the one thing I absolutely hated about canon. It left a bad taste in my mouth and I had a deep moral aversion to it. I strongly prefer an ending where Roy stays blind and still accomplishes everything he wanted, to rebuild Ishval and earn the Presidency of Amestris. 
> 
> I went back and forth a lot about whether to honor Roy's canon ending in this fic, since the fic is canon compliant, or to make the alteration that I felt so passionately about. I'm grateful to my friends on tumblr for talking me through it, for encouraging me to write what felt right to me regardless of canon compliance, and for reassuring me that they'd support whatever path I chose. Thank you. 
> 
> Shoutout to @wind-on-the-panes for giving me the idea of the presence of psychiatrists as part of the Ishvalan reconstruction team. ❤️ 
> 
> I loved writing the scene with Havoc's welcome-back party. It was great to have a happy scene, after a while of darkness and drama. I really enjoyed writing the other scenes with Riza and Falman, Ed and Al, Rebecca, and Gracia and Elicia, too. I know that Falman literally is not real but I was still very hyped to write about him being engaged!! And the scene with Elicia and Roy made me melt a little. 
> 
> It's interesting to write the dynamic between Roy and Riza, as they're in a sort of in-between stage right now. 
> 
> I'm not sure if I'll update again before the end of this year, so I want to say a special thank-you to everyone who has read and commented on this fic since I posted it in early July. Working on delicate has been one of the four greatest joys of my year, and something that has given me an indescribable amount of fulfillment and comfort. The fact that you all have enjoyed it too, and been so responsive, is such a gift. I am grateful. I hope that all of you have a peaceful, safe, healthy end of 2020, and that 2021 brings you only the best things. ❤️
> 
> Thank you for reading, and I hope that you enjoyed it! I would love to hear what you thought about this chapter. Any comments will be treasured. I am also on tumblr @lantur if you would like to connect. :)


	20. eighteen

It takes one week for Roy to get his glasses. Dr. Knox tells the unit that it normally takes three, but the ophthalmologist is a personal friend of his, and Knox has called in a favor. Roy splits the week between work and physical therapy dedicated to helping him regain full use of his hands.

Riza’s own hands tingle with empathetic pain as she watches Roy’s initial evaluation. He can barely grasp objects like a toothbrush, a pen, a knife and fork, or a sandwich, for more than a minute or two before his hands and wrists are wracked with agonising spasms. The only tell that Riza spots when these descend on him is the most minute of pained grimaces, followed by subtly setting down whatever he was holding at the time. 

Roy demonstrates his issues with doing and undoing buttons to the physical therapist, and the therapist takes notes. He offers Roy a piece of paper and asks him to write a few sentences. The General’s handwriting is labored and clumsy, and he scowls at the paper before him. Riza knows that he took pride in his neat penmanship, and her heart goes out to him, for yet another loss. 

Roy glares at the large, thick adaptive pen that the physical therapists give him to practice with. “I miss my normal clothes,” he confesses to Riza later that morning, looking down at his long-sleeved black shirt. The material is fine and expensive, like all of his clothing. It’s still a far cry from the shirt and tie he normally favors. “This is too casual. I saw Fullmetal wearing a shirt just like this yesterday.” He makes a face. “I should  _ not _ be wearing the same outfit as a fifteen-year-old.” 

“Sixteen,” Riza corrects automatically. “You heard the therapy team. They expect that you’ll have significantly improved your hand movement and dexterity by the end of the month.”

Roy’s expression makes it clear this is unacceptable to him. “We’ll see about that. I’ll make all that progress in two weeks.”

Riza smiles. “You sound like Edward.”

Alphonse, sitting across from them at the therapy table as he works on his own hand and arm exercises, chimes in. “It could be worse, General Mustang. At least you’re not wearing Brother’s red coat and stomping around in boots like his, too.”

Riza and Alphonse giggle at the mental image, and Roy looks disgusted. “Hey!” Edward slams his therapeutic putty down on the table. “I’m right here, you know!” 

While Roy, Edward, Alphonse, and Havoc work through their physical therapy, Riza and the rest of the unit immerse themselves in sorting out the logistics of the Ishvalan restoration project. They are joined by Roy and Havoc whenever the two of them get a break in their therapy schedules, and the unit begins the process of filling out the paperwork and making the phone calls to order all the materials, supplies, and equipment necessary for the reconstruction.

They require a huge quantity of raw materials for construction - cement, concrete, brick, stone, wood, metal, and glass. “Shouldn’t a lot of those things be in Ishval already?” Fuery asks. “From the ruins of buildings, and homes, and such? Could General Mustang, Major Armstrong, and Scar use their alchemy to repurpose the existing ruins?”

Riza shakes her head. “Amestrian construction companies had the same idea, years ago. They sent their teams of alchemists in and stripped the region of almost all usable material. We’ll have to bring everything in.”

“I ran some numbers.” Falman pats a thick stack of papers in front of him. “We are already running up against our budgets for construction and infrastructure-related costs. It is eating into the budget for agricultural development, and that is not ideal.”

“We’ll get some more estimates. I don’t want our budgets getting messed up this early in the game.” Roy squeezes the grip strengthening tool one of his physical therapists gave him. “And don’t be afraid to exert pressure when you’re making these inquiries. Don’t let them feel like they’re in a position of power over us and that they can just name their price.” 

His gaze lands squarely on Falman and Fuery, the soft-spoken members of the unit. Both of them nod their agreement. “Yes, General!”

“I talked to my parents yesterday,” Havoc says. “They confirmed that they’ll be able to source our basics. Nails, screws, drills and drill bits, construction anchors, other fasteners and connectors - the whole nine yards. Discount rate, since it’s a huge bulk order.”

“Good.” Roy drops his grip strengthening tool and begins his hand stretches. “Are they going to be able to provide such a large supply?”

“Yeah, they’ll be able to make it happen.” Havoc grins. “They wanted to thank you for the business, too.”

“We’re lucky to have such a connection.” Riza checks off  _ construction basics  _ in her journal. “What about some other basics? Doorknobs, showerheads, and so on?”

“Got it.” Havoc waves a hand vaguely. “Doorknobs, showerheads, window latches, locks, shower curtains and rods to hang them on, and other construction basics like buckets. I’ll call them back today and ask them to send us the complete list of what they’re able to supply.” 

“Thank you. Are they able to help with our food supply as well?” 

“Yep. Flour, oats, barley, rice, dried beans and lentils, canned vegetables and fruits, and boxed snacks.”

“Which leaves us only needing meat, and fresh grains, vegetables, and fruits.” Breda rubs his chin, contemplating. “Doesn’t Ed’s old teacher own a butcher shop with her husband? I’ll see if I can get a lead on who their livestock suppliers are.”

“If I remember correctly, the Ishvalans’ primary meat sources are goat, lamb, and chicken,” Roy says. “It won’t be an issue to get lamb and chicken. See if they’re aware of anyone who supplies goats.”

Hours pass like minutes when immersed in discussion and work like this. Two days after Dr. Marcoh uses the Philosopher’s Stone to heal Havoc and Roy, Riza’s physician at the hospital deems her safe to be discharged, as the stitches around her neck are healing without complications. Riza and Black Hayate still spend their days at the hospital, as well as some overnights. Breda and Maria Ross did an excellent job of stepping in as the General’s bodyguards, but Riza finds herself relieved to return to the role of her General’s protector. It is a familiar, comforting constant in a time of great change. 

(And every minute of time she spends with Roy, under these new, peaceful circumstances, helps heal the shock and fear and sorrow that burned itself into her mind in the tunnels underneath Central on the Promised Day. The invisible wounds are beginning to scab over, just as the burns on her back did, eight years ago.)

Riza isn’t the only one at Roy’s side when he emerges from the ophthalmologist’s office with his new corrective lenses. Havoc managed the stairs, aided with his crutches. Breda followed a few steps behind to catch him if he fell. Fuery and Falman finished their phone meetings with a couple of construction companies in time to join them, as well. The unit arrays themselves outside of the office, conversing in hushed tones as they wait for Roy. 

Their General steps out, and everyone falls silent, staring at him. 

“Huh.” Breda squints. “That’s...interesting.”

“You always said you wanted to look older,” Havoc offers, with an air of wild optimism. “Now you do, so you won’t have to grow that mustache you were thinking about!”

Riza can’t help but raise an eyebrow. This is the first she’s heard of a mustache. 

“Is it that bad?” Roy’s shoulders slump. 

“Not at all, sir!” Fuery chirps, almost as cheerfully as Havoc. “We match!”

“It gives you an, ah, scholarly air,” Falman replies. “It could be much worse, General. Lieutenant Cuda at Fort Briggs was prescribed corrective lenses, and they made him look like Fyodorov. You do not look like a mad dictator at all.” 

“Though you might,” Breda adds. “If you do grow the mustache. So maybe hold off on that.”

Roy takes one step backwards, as if contemplating a retreat back into the ophthalmologist’s office. He turns to her in desperation. “Captain? What do you think?”

Riza bites back her reflexive response, which had been embarrassingly unprofessional. She likes the glasses. She likes them very much. “Don’t worry, General. You look all right like this.” 

Perhaps her response swung a bit far to the other side.  _ You absolute idiot,  _ Riza chastises herself.  _ He tells you that you’re the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen in his entire life, and you tell him that he looks all right?  _

Havoc, Breda, Falman, and Fuery look mortified on the General’s behalf. Havoc shakes his head, despairing, at her, and Riza can read the expression in his eyes as clearly as if he had spoken it aloud.  _ When your own Captain, best friend, and secret girlfriend tells you you look merely “all right…”  _

“Right, then.” Roy adjusts his uniform coat, as if trying to distract himself from contemplations about taking a running leap out of the nearest window. “Let’s head out. I need to complete my discharge paperwork, and we have to be at the Armstrong mansion for our meeting with Major Miles and Scar in an hour.”

-

Riza drives Roy’s car, with the General in the passenger seat, and the rest of the unit squished into the backseat. (Four men, in a three-passenger back seat. Havoc complains that he forgot how sharp Falman’s elbows were.) The topic of discussion for a good part of the drive is the unit’s general nervousness about the meeting with Major Miles and Scar.

“I know Scar helped save all of our asses on the Promised Day, but it’s hard for me to forget about when he was after Ed and the General.” Breda tries to make himself as small as possible in the back seat. “I trust you and Captain Hawkeye, though. If you guys think we can make this work, then we can make it work.”

“I’m actually more nervous about how it’s going to affect our plans.” Fuery pushes his glasses up on his nose. “I know it’s only been about eight days, but we’ve covered a lot of ground. I feel kind of...protective, I guess, about the plans. I hope that Major Miles and Scar don’t see anything wrong with them.”

“Major Miles is not one to be unfairly critical,” Falman points out. “If he raises any points to address, they will be valid, not petty.”

“Well, it’s good we have you for an in with Major Miles,” Havoc says. “That kind of makes things easier.”

“I understand that you all have reservations about working with Scar.” Roy crosses his arms over his chest. “But he more than proved himself on the Promised Day, and the insight he can offer will be critical to us. Miles and Scar may have a different point of view over what we’re bringing to the table today, but I know we’ll be able to work it out. Our goal is the same.”

Riza checks the clock in the car. “We’re ahead of schedule, so I’m going to stop at that florist’s over there, sir.”

“What?” Roy asks, bemused. “Why?”

“Oh, there’s a deli next door, too.” Breda peers out of the window. “Good. I’ll go get a meat and cheese platter while you’re at the florist’s.”

“Is this really the time?” 

Riza parks the car on the side of the street. “It’s for General Armstrong, sir.”

“My mom always says that food’s the best thing to give to someone who’s grieving.” Havoc grabs his crutches from the floor of the passenger seat. 

Falman, Fuery, and Roy stay behind in the car, and Riza, Breda, and Havoc return within a few minutes. Breda holds a deli and cheese platter, while Riza carries an arrangement of white roses and lilies. “That’s beautiful, Captain,” Fuery says, as they all re-enter the car. Roy takes the flowers from her. “I’m sure the General will appreciate it.”

The unit is quiet for the rest of the drive to the Armstrong mansion. It could have just as easily been them - their General, their unit - in General Armstrong and Captain Buccaneer’s place, Riza reflects. They had been extraordinarily lucky, to pull through in the way they did. Especially after what had happened to Roy, and to her.

They stand in a cluster on the front steps of the mansion, and Riza knocks. One of the household staff, an older woman in a black uniform, promptly opens the door and ushers them inside. “Major Miles is waiting for you in the library. I’ll show you in.” 

Riza, Roy, and Falman have been to the Armstrong mansion before, but Havoc, Breda, and Fuery gape in awe at their surroundings as they all make their way to the library. Riza glances into one of the studies on the lower level as she passes. She pauses, recognizing the figure standing near the window, her arms folded behind her back.

Roy follows her gaze. “Go ahead. Meet us in the library when you’re done.”

Riza takes the platter from Breda, and she knocks on the study door, holding the flower arrangement in the crook of her arm. General Armstrong turns. “You may enter.”

Riza approaches, setting the platter and the flower arrangement down on one of the tables, before standing at attention and saluting. “General Armstrong.”

“Captain Hawkeye.” There are faint, bruise-like shadows underneath Armstrong’s eyes. “What’s all this?”

“Our unit and I wanted to offer our sincere condolences for your loss.” Riza bows her head. They all knew Captain Buccaneer from the annual joint training exercises, though Falman had come to know him best after his seven months’ service at Fort Briggs. 

“Thank you.” General Armstrong looks out the window. “I’m glad your unit took no losses,” she says, taking Riza by surprise. “You all seem to be as close as my men.”

“We are, General.” Riza hesitates. “Additionally, thank you for allowing Lieutenant Falman to join us in Ishval. It means a great deal to General Mustang to have his original unit reunited on this effort.”

Armstrong scoffs. “I didn’t do it for Mustang. I could see how much it meant to Falman. I’ve never seen him advocate so passionately for something.”

“Still, thank you. Lieutenant Falman’s intelligence and expertise will be a valuable asset to us.”

“And losing him, even for a year, will be a detriment to Fort Briggs. To say nothing of losing Miles and Buccaneer.” General Armstrong narrows her eyes, and Riza understands that she is masking her pain and grief with anger. Roy has done the same so many times. Olivier Armstrong won’t have an easy journey ahead. 

The General walks over to the flowers and reaches out, brushing her fingers over a rose petal in a gesture that strikes Riza as unusually gentle, for someone so bold and forceful. “I have half a mind to talk to Mustang and request you in exchange for lending Falman and Miles to the Ishvalan restoration project. In losing Miles and Buccaneer, Briggs is losing valuable strength, courage, and expertise.”

It isn’t the first time General Armstrong has offered her a position at Fort Briggs. Despite her comparatively low rank in contrast to General Armstrong’s, the reputation she gained in Ishval makes her the second most prominent woman in the Amestrian military.  _ You could have General Armstrong as a mentor,  _ Bresler told her, once.  _ I’m sure she would be interested in a protege who comes with the accomplishments that you do.  _ Just a month before that, Major Hall told her that she could make it all the way to the top, just like Olivier Armstrong.

In a different world, Riza would have been honored to serve General Armstrong, and to learn from her. She’s always admired Armstrong’s intelligence, ferocity, and dedication to her men. As it is now, she declines politely, as she has before. “I’m honored by the offer, General, but I need to go to Ishval.”

Armstrong raises an eyebrow. “For Mustang’s sake? Because he doesn’t have the competence to spearhead a project of this scale without as much support as he can get?”

“For my own sake,” Riza corrects. “It’s something I have to do. I’ve spent nine years waiting for this.”

“Very well, then.” Armstrong inclines her head in acknowledgement. “You’d better get to it.”

Riza salutes her, and goes to join her unit. She finds them sitting in the library, at a massive round table, with Major Miles and Scar. There are already papers covering every inch of the table’s surface. She salutes Major Miles, and nods in greeting to Scar. He nods once, reciprocating the greeting.

The seat to Roy’s right had been left empty, and Riza joins the group. “I’m sorry for missing the first few minutes of our meeting. Where were we?”

“We were discussing how to inform the Ishvalan communities in Amestris and Xing about the reconstruction,” Miles says. “Scar has connections with the Ishvalan communities in Central and East City that could help spread the word. Second Lieutenant Fuery was about to share an idea.”

Fuery consults his notes. “I came up with an underground radio station, AM frequency, while doing my usual monitoring of the airwaves. It’s AM 1137, broadcasting between nineteen-hundred hours and midnight, and again from four-hundred to seven-hundred hours. This station broadcasts Ishvalan calls to prayer, traditional music, and news. I thought that maybe Scar or Major Miles could share the information on that station, if we’re able to find who runs it.”

“How do you know about that?” Scar’s brows draw together. 

“There’s nothing on any airwaves in Amestris, Xing, Aerugo, and Drachma that our Second Lieutenant doesn’t know about,” Roy replies. Fuery glows with pride.

“All right. We’ll make that happen.” 

Roy looks at Major Miles and Scar. “I know this is a long shot, but have either one of you been back to Ishval in recent years? We need a sense of the infrastructure that already exists there. Electricity, water, sewage, and so on.”

“Those are all present, but rudimentary, and only in Ras Al-Ayn.” Scar indicates the city on the map of pre-war Ishval, laid out in front of them. “That’s where the single Amestrian military outpost is located.”

“We assumed Ras Al-Ayn would be our starting point, because of that. We’ll talk more later today about whether it would be wise to set up different settlements throughout the region, and whether we’ll be able to cover more ground that way,” Roy says. Riza notes Scar’s observation about infrastructure in Roy’s journal, which he had slid over to her. “What about buildings in Ras Al-Ayn?”

“Minimal. There’s the outpost, which would accommodate…” Scar thinks it over. “Forty people, at most. There are outhouses and rudimentary shower facilities for twenty.” 

The unit exchanges glances. “We have a lot of work to do,” Breda says. “We’ve been ordering tents and cots in mass. We’ll make construction of more outhouses and shower facilities a priority. We don’t have an accurate number of how many Ishvalans we can expect to arrive, but we figured it’s better to have more than we need, rather than less.”

“We’re getting there in late August, so the worst of the heat should be behind us, right?” Havoc asks. “People won’t be at risk from getting sick because of high temps?” 

“That’s correct.” Miles rifles through his own notes. “Speaking of the weather, we should talk about agriculture…”

-

The unit stays at the Armstrong mansion, in conference with Miles and Scar, for the next several hours. General Armstrong even comes in for lunch with them, citing her curiosity about their discussion.

They leave at seventeen-thirty hours, after scheduling another meeting for the following week. The unit is in high spirits as they walk out to the drive where the valet parked Roy’s car. “That went well,” Roy comments. “What do you all think?”

“I feel much better about everything.” Fuery’s face shines with relief. “They’re good to work with.” 

“Yeah,” Breda agrees. “But I wish we had thought about that whole thing with the water and the cotton. I felt stupid when Miles mentioned that. We should have seen that.”

“Better late than never,” Falman points out. “At least we talked to them before we placed any orders for cotton seeds.”

“True.” Havoc checks his watch. “So, where are you guys headed?”

“I’m going to my parents’ place for dinner,” Fuery says. “I want to see them as much as I can before we head to Ishval in August.”

“I’m going to the rink with Maria, Brosh, and a few other guys from their unit for some three-on-three.” Breda cracks his knuckles in anticipation. “I have to get my fix while I can. There’s no ice rinks in Ishval. Unless…”

Roy rolls his eyes. “Major Armstrong, Scar, and I are not going to build an ice rink for you and Ross.”

“It’s recreation,” Breda sulks. “It’ll be good for the children. Maria and I can coach.”

“I have a phone date with Anna.” Falman smiles. “We’re going to make dinner and listen to  _ Witness _ on the radio together.”

“That’s...actually kind of a cute idea.” 

“Any date where the woman in question doesn’t have to actually see you would be a good idea,” Roy smirks, and Havoc looks close to beating him over the head with his crutches. 

Riza smiles at them. She remembers Roy and Hughes bantering with one another in a similar way. Hughes, and the role he played in Roy’s life, is irreplaceable. It will always be irreplaceable. But she’s glad that Roy is showing some openness to friendship again. He put up walls between himself and the rest of the unit - including her - after Hughes’ murder, retreating into his compulsion to uncover the conspiracy. It’s nice to see those walls coming down, and Roy relating to the unit as he used to. 

“I’m going home to Black Hayate,” she says. “It’s a beautiful evening. We’ll go for a long walk.”

“I’m going home to work.” Roy pats his journal. “It’s a relief that the rest of our physical therapy is outpatient, Havoc. I was getting sick of hospital food.”

Falman, Fuery, and Breda decide to share a taxi to get to Fuery’s parents’ house, Falman’s hotel, and the ice rink respectively, since they’re all in the same direction, east of the Armstrong mansion. Havoc alone lingers, waving his friends off, and shifting his weight awkwardly between his crutches. “Hey, General. I was wondering if I could have a word alone with the Captain.”

Roy considers this, clearly makes the decision to be difficult, and leans against the car. “No.”

Riza and Havoc glare at him. They make their way a short distance down the drive, leaving Roy looking amused at himself and tossing his car keys up in the air, trying to catch them. Havoc remains quiet and visibly ill at ease. Riza takes pity on him. “Is this about Rebecca?” 

“How did you--” Havoc sighs. “You know everything.”

“I see everything,” Riza replies, straight-faced. “Hawk’s Eye.”

Havoc groans loudly. “You and the General, with your senses of humor…”

“She’s single.” Riza can’t hold back her smile. Rebecca has had a crush on Havoc for years. “Ask her out to the gun range, and for dinner after. She’d love that.”

“Thanks, Hawkeye.” Havoc grins. 

They return to the car, and Riza asks Havoc if he wants a ride to Central Command, to meet Rebecca there. “Nah, I don’t want to interrupt you guys’ evening plans.” He lifts a hand in farewell. “See you tomorrow.” 

Riza and Roy watch Havoc go. Riza takes a deep breath, before turning to Roy. She doesn’t particularly like the idea of him returning to his empty apartment, alone, for the first time since the Promised Day. “General,” she says, before she can reconsider. “Would you like to come over for dinner?”

Roy fails to catch the car keys he just tossed into the air, and they clatter to the ground. Riza retrieves them, handing them back to him without comment. “That’s kind of you, Captain.” His fingers close around the keys, brushing hers as they do so. “I would like that.”

Roy unlocks the driver’s side door, opens it, and steps back, handing her the keys. It makes Riza think back to how he had always opened the passenger side door for her, once. They buckle in, and as Riza pulls the car out of the mansion’s drive, they catch sight of Havoc getting into his taxi.

“It’s a little strange, isn’t it?” Roy shifts in his seat. Riza has noticed that he does that often. He seems uncomfortable with being a passenger in his car, and not the driver. The only time she has ever driven them around is when he had been struggling with his injuries in the aftermath of the incident at the Third Laboratory.

“What? Preparing to move again, for the second time in as many years?” 

“No. I feel like they’re all growing up.” Roy shrugs. “It doesn’t even make sense to think of things like that. Falman’s three years older than me. Breda and Havoc are just a year younger. It’s only Fuery, Fullmetal, and Alphonse, who are practically kids.”

“Fuery will be thrilled to hear that you lumped him in with a sixteen-year-old and a fifteen-year-old,” Riza deadpans. 

Roy grimaces. “Don’t mention that to him.”

“It’s because all of their lives are changing.” It’s a relief that Roy feels the same way. That makes Riza feel less alone. “I felt the same way when I first visited Edward and Alphonse in the hospital, and Edward told me about his retirement. And when Falman told me about his engagement.”

“Right.” Roy sighs. “Between Falman, Breda, and Havoc - from what I overheard just now - it sounds like we could have some weddings to go to, over the next couple of years.”

Riza comes to a careful stop at the yellow traffic light, ignoring the  _ you could have made that light  _ look that Roy shoots her. “You’re forgetting Edward and Winry.” 

“Fullmetal is too young to get married,” Roy counters. “Alphonse was talking about traveling the world, yesterday. I just… It’s a little strange, that’s all. Things are changing for everyone. Or almost everyone.”

Riza wonders if this is how parents feel. Perhaps some might think it is unusual, or sad, for her and Roy to feel this for their unit - because they have no children of their own, and never will. Once, that might have saddened her, too. But she has come to see that any sense of love and warmth and family is worth cherishing, even if it isn’t the conventional sort. 

“It is,” she says. “Things are changing, and it makes me nervous too. But there are some things that will never change.”

Their commitment to their goals. To rebuilding Ishval, attaining justice for the Ishvalans who were murdered, and reforming Amestris. 

Their feelings for one another.

The light changes from red to green. Roy looks like he is going to say something, but he remains silent. 

Riza thinks more about the things that will change, and the things that won’t, for the remainder of the drive to her apartment. She parks the car, and hands Roy the keys, out of habit. “No, thanks.” His words are firm, but a flash of pain, quickly suppressed, crosses his features. “The car is yours now.”

“General--”

Roy holds up a hand, forestalling her argument. “It’s not like I can drive it anyway.”

Riza relents. “Are you sure?”

“There’s no one else I’d rather give it to.” Roy attempts a smile. “I know you’ll take the best care of it. Between the two of us, you’re the only one who remembers when the oil needs to be changed, anyway. And you know how to do it yourself.” 

“Thank you, sir.” Her impulse is to put a hand on his arm, but that feels inappropriate, after inviting him over for dinner. Riza curls her hands into fists instead. She and Roy walk up to her apartment, and he waits in the living room with Black Hayate while she changes into civilian clothes. She chooses a knee-length gray skirt and a light purple sleeveless top, and lets her hair down. 

Riza returns to the living room to find that Roy has shed his uniform coat and overcoat. Both hang on the coat rack, side-by-side with her uniform coat. He kneels in front of Black Hayate near the door, fastening Hayate’s lead onto his collar. “Good boy,” he praises, petting Hayate on the head. “Are you ready to go out?”

Riza pauses, taking in the sight, before walking forward to join them. They spend an hour out in the perfect spring evening, remaining immersed in conversation as they make a lengthy circuit through the neighborhood. The pup pants, content, as the three of them return to their apartment.  _ My apartment,  _ Riza corrects, chiding herself for the error. Hayate heads to his dog bed, and Riza proceeds to the kitchen. Roy follows her, rolling up his sleeves to the elbows. “I want to help you with dinner.”

Riza sets out the chicken and vegetables for the stir-fry, and checks the bread dough she set out on the counter earlier. The thought of Roy chopping vegetables or meat isn’t one she is comfortable with, considering the current state of his hands. “You can wash the vegetables, and give the dough another knead for me.”

Riza mixes the citrusy stir-fry sauce from memory, while Roy washes the vegetables and places them near her cutting board and knife. He eyes the bread dough skeptically, and then moves both himself, the dough, and the large mixing bowl, to come to rest beside her. “How do I knead it?”

“Work it in the same motion that you do with the putty in therapy,” Riza instructs. “Sorry that this isn’t bright purple.”

They stand almost shoulder-to-shoulder, and Riza slices her vegetables and watches Roy knead the dough, his movements going from tentative to more confident. The physical therapy has been working. He seems quite good with his hands.

Riza directs her attention back to her onions. 

They talk about Ishval, Amestris, and Grumman until Riza is finished with the stir-fry, and until the bread is finished baking. Roy tries his hand at mixing a herbed butter for the bread. (Riza cuts up the herbs.) They take the bread and stir-fry to the living room to eat their dinner on the sofa. This had become something of a tradition over the months they planned their coup in her apartment, over late-night dinners. 

“It feels like it’s been years since we’ve done this,” Roy observes, as he sinks down onto the sofa. “Not four or five months.” 

She had missed his company a great deal, over the months of separation. Riza doesn’t admit it aloud, but then, she thinks, she probably doesn’t have to. She slices off a chunk of bread, warm from the oven, and butters it. “Time hasn’t stretched that long since I was a child.”

That had been the last time she was so alone. Roy moves like he is about to put a hand on her shoulder, and then he pulls back, straightening his collar instead. “That will never happen again. I promise.” 

The evening walk, and the chat, and the long dinner, work their spell on her. Riza relaxes against the sofa as they eat and talk. Roy’s presence makes her feel as content and satisfied as the food. She missed working alongside him, spending hours together striving for the same purpose. She missed bouncing ideas off one another and planning and occasionally arguing about which path to take. 

“Anyway, twenty should be a good starting point for the number of industrial freezers to order.” Roy rises, takes her plate, and heads to the kitchen to begin washing the dishes. “Do you have any idea who manufactures them?” 

Riza taps her pen against Roy’s journal. “I don’t. Can you check the model of my refrigerator and freezer in the kitchen?”

He emerges from the kitchen. “Grainger.”

“All right.” Riza notes that down in her own journal. “I’ll call them tomorrow and see if they make industrial freezers as well.”

She looks up to see Roy lingering at the doorway to the kitchen, watching her with a surprisingly soft expression on his face. He retreats to the kitchen sink immediately after being caught. “I’ve never seen anyone look so happy about freezers.”

“How many people do you talk to about freezers?” 

Roy’s laugh makes her smile. Riza returns to her work, until he re-emerges from the kitchen. “I missed this.” He studiously avoids looking at her, as he pulls his journal close to his face to read it. “Working with you is different from working alone.”

It’s true. Maybe that is part of what has left her with such quiet satisfaction, over these past several days. Even aside from being friends and confidantes - or more than friends and confidantes - they work well together. Seamlessly, after so many years. “I agree, sir. It didn’t feel right to work with anyone else.” Riza writes down  _ establish community food shelf  _ in her journal. “Even aside from the fact that the commanding officer in question was a homunculus.”

Roy laughs again, and Riza savors the warmth of it. “I’m glad you’d choose me over a homunculus.”

_ I would choose you over anyone.  _ Riza keeps writing, and keeps that to herself.

Roy’s stifled yawn, a while later, prompts her to look up at the clock. Riza sets down her pen, taken aback. “General, it’s close to twenty-two hundred hours.” 

“All right, Captain.” Roy flips his journal closed and stands, making his way to the coat rack. He pulls on his uniform coat, and his dark overcoat. “Thanks for dinner. I’ll bring you some next time.” 

Roy rests his hand on the doorknob, and Riza steps out of her house slippers and into her black leather loafers. “Hold on, sir. I’ll come with you.” 

“It’s a couple of blocks, Hawkeye,” Roy replies, a little nonplussed. “I can walk a couple of blocks on my own.”

Riza declines, even though guilt at doing so pricks at her. “I’m not comfortable with it, sir. You’re not able to safely use ranged Flame Alchemy. And you’re higher-profile now, after the coup, than you ever have been. I’m sure there are a lot of loyalists to the old regime that want you and Grumman dead, to say nothing of garden-variety criminals looking for a mark.”

Roy’s expression is unreadable. She can’t imagine what it must be like, to go from being one of the most powerful men alive, to being vulnerable, in this way. “Fine,” he allows. The word is terse and sad at the same time. 

Riza calls Black Hayate to her, so that she will have him on the walk back. They are silent for half of the walk back to Roy’s apartment, before he mutters something inaudible, shoving his hands into the pockets of his coat. “Maybe I should get a dog. A big, fierce one, so that people think twice about mugging me.”

“I’ll never discourage you from getting a dog, General. Black Hayate has been very helpful to me.”

“Hmm.” Roy mulls it over. “That’s something to think about. You can help me train him, or her. You’ve done a good job with the Second Lieutenant there.”

“Perhaps a  _ her, _ ” Riza suggests. “A friend for Black Hayate.”

“Sure.” Roy’s easy tone suggests he has recovered some of his equilibrium. “But you can’t name her. You have terrible naming sense.”

They walk up to Roy’s apartment. It has been empty since the Promised Day, and Riza performs a thorough security sweep, leaving Roy and Black Hayate waiting in the kitchen. “Clear,” Riza announces, as she returns. “Will you be able to get around all right if you remove your glasses?”

“I’ll be fine.” Roy removes his glasses as if to check. He looks blankly around the apartment, his brow furrowed, and then puts them back on, his relief evident. 

Riza quells her worries about intruders while he sleeps. Additionally, they should contact the ophthalmologist and order several spare pairs of Roy’s glasses, in case the pair he wears is damaged. “Call me,” she says, making her way to the door. “If you need anything tonight.”

“I will.” Roy’s gaze pins her to the spot. “Thank you for looking out for me, Captain.”

“You’re welcome.” Riza takes a deep breath. It is stupid that this has bothered her all day, but it has to be said. “I think you look very handsome in the glasses, sir. I just didn’t want to say so earlier, in front of the unit.”

Roy blinks. When it sinks in, he doesn’t run a hand through his hair, or stand up straighter, or smirk in the way he usually does when complimented. He beams, pure joy lighting up his face. “Thank you, Hawkeye.”

Riza tightens her hand around Black Hayate’s lead, and wishes her General good night, in the most professional tone she can manage. She exits the apartment as fast as she can without outright fleeing. 

-

There is so much work to be done around preparing for the move to Ishval and the early stages of the restoration project that it is natural that the work spills over into the evening hours. Riza doesn’t mind. Keeping her thoughts occupied with dozens of different threads of thoughts and considerations during all of her waking hours has the convenient side effect of keeping her nightmares at bay. 

(Most nights, Riza dreams of mountains of construction materials, missed deliveries or deliveries made to incorrect locations, and city planning mishaps. Most nights, she does not dream of Wrath pinning Roy to the ground, impaling him with his swords through the palms of each hand. She does not dream of the Fuhrer candidates, and the cold bite of steel at her throat, and the hot blood gushing out over her hands. She does not dream about Roy lashing out with fury at Envy. Her Colonel, her Roy, twisted and warped into someone terrifying unrecognizable.) 

Havoc, Breda, Falman, and Fuery loyally offer to stay late at their old office in Central Command, but Roy declines. “We’ll be working long hours, doing hard labor, in Ishval. I don’t want to intrude on your personal time now.”

So it is just the two of them in the office, along with Black Hayate, who now comes to work with Riza every day. Every day at eighteen-thirty hours, Riza tells her General that she’s going to take Black Hayate for a walk. Roy offers to come with the two of them, just to stretch his legs. On the way back, Riza and Hayate wait outside on the sidewalk as Roy stops into various cafes or eateries to pick up a to-go dinner for them to share in the office. She does not allow herself to pay attention to the other couples who sit openly together on the patios, holding hands under the twilight sky as they enjoy their meals and sip their drinks. 

Riza drives Roy home at the end of every night and walks him up to his apartment, just as he used to do for her. And every night, as they look one another in the eye and wish each other a polite goodnight, she has the inescapable sense that she is flirting with something inevitable. 

She and Rebecca go out for brunch that weekend, and Rebecca tells her everything about her first kiss with Havoc. Her dark eyes shine, and there is a flush on her cheeks. Riza hasn’t seen Rebecca look this excited about a first kiss since they were teenage girls together, back in the Academy. 

“I’m happy for you.” Riza stirs some honey into her tea, and smiles at her best friend. “I’m glad that it was everything that you’ve dreamed of.”

(It makes her think of her most recent first kiss, and how it surpassed every first kiss she has ever had.)

“Thanks.” Rebecca sighs dreamily, propping her chin up in her hand. She shakes herself out of her reverie, and spoons more fresh whipped cream onto her waffles. “What about you? Kissed anyone lately?”

The question is light and airy, typical of Rebecca, but Riza picks up on the serious undertone to it. “No.” She lowers her voice, and spears a strawberry off the top of her waffles. “We’ve just been getting back to where we were last spring, before everything happened. Learning how to be with each other again.” 

Rebecca watches her warily. “That’s good. How do you feel about it?” 

“I don’t normally take things slow.” Riza focuses on cutting off a bite of her waffles. “You wouldn’t think it, but it actually feels nice. It feels - comfortable for me.” 

“I’m glad.” Rebecca tries to smile. “I’m happy you’re comfortable, Riza.” 

“Enough about me.” Riza points her fork at Rebecca. “Tell me what you’re wearing for your next date.”

-

The following Thursday, Riza invites Roy over for dinner at her apartment, citing the fact that it is only fair, since he has bought all of their dinners for two weeks. His hands have improved somewhat, and he stands by her side in the kitchen, helping her cook. 

They sit together on the sofa after dinner, as close as they used to last winter. In the end, it isn’t deliberate. Riza doesn’t make the conscious decision to act. It is just growing late at night, and she leans into him, exhausted after the long day. Roy stiffens, and Riza almost pulls back, but then he wraps an arm around her shoulder, drawing her close to him. 

Neither of them says anything about it. They keep working, as they always do. 

-

Through unspoken mutual agreement, they start spending their working evenings at Riza’s apartment, rather than at the office. Riza can barely even admit to herself how much she enjoys these evenings cuddled up with Roy on the sofa. It is only what she has longed for for years.

(Sometimes Riza does not dream about mountains of construction materials, missed deliveries or deliveries made to incorrect locations, and city planning mishaps. She dreams of Wrath pinning Roy to the ground, impaling him with his swords through the palms of each hand. She dreams of the Fuhrer candidates, and the cold bite of steel at her throat, and the hot blood gushing out over her hands. She dreams of Roy lashing out with fury at Envy. Her Colonel, her Roy, twisted and warped into someone terrifying and unrecognizable.

She wakes up with screams lodged in her throat, her face wet with tears. Black Hayate presses himself close to her. Riza hugs him, and lies back down. She focuses on Black Hayate’s soft, warm fur, and her memories of being held by Roy - her Roy, the man she knows and loves - earlier in the evening. Both things bring her solace.) 

They don’t do anything more than hold one another, and Riza is grateful for that. She needs this time. She rests her head against Roy’s shoulder as they draw out areas on the map to designate for agricultural, business, and housing development, and she savors the sensations of safety and comfort that have become familiar to her again, as familiar as breathing. 

-

One night some weeks later, when Riza feels ready, she kisses Roy on the cheek when saying goodnight. Despite her best efforts to remain calm, her heart pounds like a rabbit’s. 

Roy places a hand on the small of her back, and anticipation curls in the pit of Riza’s stomach. He presses a soft kiss to her forehead, instead. “Good night, Captain.”

She should go. His hand is still on her back. Something deep inside her makes the decision not to step away, not yet. Riza leans forward, kissing him on the lips. 

It is gentle and sweet, brief and chaste. Not at all the kind of kiss she has any experience in giving, or receiving. It is the kind of kiss she wanted for her first kiss, when she was young. Riza draws back after a scant moment, flustered. “I’m sorry, sir.”

“Don’t be,” Roy says, at once. He wraps his arms around her, and studies her as intently as he has ever contemplated any of his plans. “Is this something you want?” 

“Yes.” Riza is mildly surprised at how calm the acknowledgement, the decision, is. At how there are no misgivings, no fears or doubts or uncertainties, that underlie the word. 

“Are you sure?” Roy presses. 

She would be irritated at this, normally. She knows her own mind, and she has had ample time since the Promised Day to think this over. She wouldn’t have let things escalate between them like this if she hadn’t been absolutely certain. But Riza looks into his eyes, picking up on the worry there, and she understands. “Yes,” she repeats.

“We’ll take things slow,” Roy tells her. “It’s the right thing to do.” 

“Of course,” Riza says. “Just as we have been.”

Roy kisses her then, so much more gently than any of their previous kisses. Riza leans into him, fisting her hands in the lapels of his coat. She turns inward, checking in with herself. Searching, with a fine-toothed comb, for fear or anxiety or worry, or apprehension, or anything telling her,  _ stop. Don’t. This isn’t right. This isn’t really what you want.  _

She’s quieted those emotions and voices before, so many times. This time, they don’t speak up at all. All that washes over her, as unceasingly as waves lapping against the shore, is an unmistakable sense of belonging.

They spend a full half an hour kissing one another goodnight, both of them unable, or unwilling, to let go.

When they finally pull apart, holding one another in their arms, breathless, Roy strokes her hair, prompting her to look up at him. “Was that all right?”

“More than all right.” Riza rests her cheek against his shoulder. 

“We’ll talk about it more tomorrow after work.” Roy hugs her tightly. “Go get some rest.”

-

Riza is so keyed up that she goes straight to the Central Command gun range with Black Hayate, despite the late hour. She doesn’t return home until past midnight.

-

The following evening, they both leave work at the end of normal working hours, with the rest of the unit, which everyone comments on. “Are you two finally getting a life? Finally putting your workaholic tendencies behind you?” Havoc asks, in mock awe. “Maybe we should check if the Xerxian desert has frozen over.”

Roy glares at him. “I’ll send you there personally to make inquiries, Havoc.”

Roy comes over to her place at half-past twenty-hundred hours, after Riza has had dinner with Gracia and Elicia, walked Black Hayate, and taken a cool shower, dressing in a white eyelet lace skirt and sleeveless blouse. Riza opens the door to find Roy holding a large bouquet of roses. The blossoms’ deep crimson is the same shade as his tie. “It’s been a while.” He offers the flowers to her.

Riza can’t help but smile as she takes them. She steps back and allows him to enter, shutting and locking the door behind them. “Did you get drunk and buy too many flowers again?”

“Not this time.” Roy kisses her, and even as she reciprocates, Riza realizes, belatedly, that she hasn’t seen him drink anything besides water and sparkling juices since before the Promised Day. He hasn’t ordered any wine with their dinners, or liquor when the unit has gone out on Friday evenings. She’s been too distracted with conversation to notice, until now. 

Perhaps it is something to discuss later. They have other matters to attend to tonight. Riza fills a vase with water and sets the flowers in it, while Roy hangs his coat on the rack. They settle on the sofa, hand-in-hand. Roy broaches the topic, caressing his thumb over her knuckles. “How do you feel about what happened last night?” 

“I’m comfortable with it, and I enjoyed it.” Riza looks at him, so that he can see the truth in her expression. “I would do it again, and I would do more.”

“So would I.” Roy closes his eyes for a moment. “I still think we should take things slow. Once we cross that line, we can’t un-cross it. I’ll let you decide how and when to move forward.”

“All right.” Riza stands up, and offers a hand to Roy. 

He takes it automatically, standing beside her. “What are you doing?”

“Making my decision,” Riza says evenly.

Roy stumbles on the corner of Black Hayate’s dog bed, and Hayate looks up at him curiously. “I - I should go, then. Just to the corner store.”

“You don’t have to. I’ve been getting contraceptive injections at my annual physicals for years.”

“Okay,” Roy almost squeaks. 

They make their way to her bedroom, and Riza closes the door behind them. There is a finality to the quiet  _ click  _ of the door as it closes. It gives her the sense that this is another demarcation in her life. Another moment that will irrevocably separate  _ before  _ and  _ after.  _ Just like when she slipped her blazer off, revealing the tattoo on her back to her father’s former apprentice. When she picked up the phone, a few days later, and dialed the State Military Academy phone line. When she confirmed her choice to serve as a sniper, at the end of her first semester at the Academy. And when she stood in Roy’s office in East City Command two years later, and vowed to do whatever she could to support him in making his goal, his ambition, a reality.

_ No,  _ Riza tells herself. This is going to be a different sort of beginning, to a journey that won’t be as harrowing and fraught as the rest of her life’s journeys.

She is surprised by the calmness, the matter-of-fact nature, of the thought. It carries none of the faintly desperate undertones that have characterized her thoughts and rationalizations with other men. 

Roy sits at the edge of her precisely made bed. One hand rests on his leg, on the dark material of his dress pants. His other hand clutches the bedspread, and that is the only tell of how nervous he is. It is oddly reassuring that she isn’t alone in processing the impact of this. Riza sits beside him, nestling against his side. Roy wraps an arm around her, holding her close. She rests her cheek against his shoulder, and he strokes her hair, before kissing the top of her head. The tenderness of the gesture makes her eyes burn with tears.

Roy rubs his thumb in small, soothing circles against her upper arm. “How are you feeling?”

His tone is one of calm concern, familiar to her after years of working together. Riza swallows. She doesn’t need to think about their long professional history now. “I’m a little nervous.”

Once, she would have lied. She would have told him she was fine, that she was ready, that she wanted it now, because she wanted to please. Because she wanted nothing more than to give him what he wanted. 

Riza has been in that position before, in more instances than she cares to remember. She doesn’t want this to be just another one of those instances. 

Roy is silent for a few, agonizing moments. “I am, too.” He rubs her arm again. “We really don’t have to do this now. We can wait.”

The offer is tempting. Riza considers it, and then draws back, studying him. Roy meets her gaze, and she can read the honesty in his demeanor. The offer had been sincere. Still, she gives him a slight shake of her head. “If I didn’t do things just because I was nervous, there are a lot of things I wouldn’t get done.”

“Sure,” Roy replies, his brows drawing together. “That makes sense, if you’re talking about a field assignment or a tough meeting with senior staff. This is - more personal than that.”

“I know.” Riza reaches out and straightens his tie. “We’re never not going to be nervous about this.”

A small, humorless smirk touches Roy’s lips. “I don’t know about that. We weren’t nervous on the night before the Promised Day.” 

“I don’t think either of us were in our right mind at the time,” Riza points out. “We thought that we might die.”

“That’s true.” Roy’s gaze drops to the scar around her neck. 

Riza hesitates, and then remembers that she doesn’t have to hold herself back from physical expressiveness any longer. She leans in, wrapping her arms around his waist, giving him a hug. Roy tenses up, unused to her initiating a demonstration of affection, and then he returns her embrace. She closes her eyes, savoring the sensation of warmth and safety that floods through her. 

“I don’t want to wait any longer,” Riza says quietly.

She’s still fully dressed, but she feels vulnerable, naked, at the admission. Roy caresses her back, trying to soothe her. “Okay.” He pulls away, just enough to look her in the eye. “If you’re not comfortable at any time, I want you to say something, so that we can stop.”

“Yes.” Riza bites off the  _ sir  _ from the end. 

Roy seems to hear it anyway, and he frowns. “I mean it. I’m worried that you won’t. You’re a soldier. You’re used to toughing out discomfort and pain, because you think it’s worth it, or it’s something that just has to be pushed through for the mission’s sake. I don’t…” He exhales, short, sharp, frustrated. “I don’t want to hurt you, and not even know it.” 

Riza can see that concern, etched into the lines at the corners of Roy’s eyes. It breaks her heart, and makes it brim with love, at the same time. She cups his face in one hand, brushing her thumb lightly against the soft skin underneath his eye, just under his glasses. 

“Echo.” It’s the first word that comes to mind. It’s short, and memorable, and less loaded - less difficult to say - than  _ no  _ or  _ stop.  _

Roy nods, understanding sinking in. “Echo. That’s good.” 

They cuddle at the foot of the bed for a little while. Riza moves closer, coming just short of sitting on Roy’s lap. He tucks her hair behind her ear, letting the touch linger, and then traces the lock of hair as it spills down over the side of her neck and her collarbone. The light touch sends a pleasurable shiver down Riza’s spine, and she tilts her neck back in an involuntary response to the caress. 

Roy withdraws his fingers a bit awkwardly when he reaches the top of her breasts. He looks at her neck, and Riza can almost read him making the connection between the way he touched her there and her reaction. He repeats the gesture, stroking the backs of his fingers up and down the side of her neck, slow and tentative. It sets her nerve endings alight with delightful, subtle heat. Riza closes her eyes, and she doesn’t restrain a contented, tiny hum.

Her eyelashes flutter open, and she finds Roy regarding her with mingled satisfaction and surprise. She has seen him look at complex alchemical equations, ones that he has coaxed a solution out of, in the same way. “You like that,” he states, as if asserting some scientific principle.

Maybe she shouldn’t tease him, but Riza can’t resist the temptation. “Obviously.”

Roy heaves a long-suffering sigh in response, and she nudges him in the side. “That’s my line.” 

“What else do you like?” Roy brushes his palm against her cheekbone, echoing her earlier gesture. Riza leans into the touch, her face burning.

The question is gently spoken, and genuine. There is nothing flirtatious or suggestive about it. Riza struggles with her response, nevertheless. She has had enough experience that she should have no difficulty answering this question. Still, she has only been asked this twice before. She was seventeen and eighteen; too young, inexperienced, and overwhelmed to have any idea of what she liked or wanted. 

( _ I just want you to make me forget,  _ she said, both times _.  _

Their lips on hers, their hands tilting her head back.  _ I can do that. _ ) 

For the first time, with a real man in front of her and not alone in bed with her own imagination, Riza gives real thought to what she wants, physically. She shrugs, a little embarrassed, and hating that she’s embarrassed. She’s nearly twenty-seven years old. She shouldn’t be embarrassed about discussing what she wants. “I liked it when you touched my neck. I would like it if you kissed me there, too.”

“Okay.” Roy presses a soft, lingering kiss to the hollow of her neck, at the base of her throat. His fingers curl around her neck, his thumb resting on her pulse point. Riza breathes in the scent of his hair before he straightens, looking her in the eye. “Where else?”

She thinks back to all of her fantasies, over the years. About every time she has been in bed, naked underneath the covers, thinking of kissing Roy on her sofa, on her bed, on his office chair, on his desk. “My collarbones, shoulders, and ears.” Riza smooths a crease from the blanket. “My waist and stomach.” She pauses, uncertain of whether to continue. She wants it, but she doesn’t want to disgust or disturb him. “My back. But you don’t have to look at it or touch me there. I won’t ask that of you. I know it’s - unsightly.”

Roy’s flinch is barely perceptible. “Nothing about you is unsightly,” he replies sharply. “Nothing.” 

It has been thirteen years since Father tattooed her, and eight years since Roy left the scars on her back. After all these years, Riza still cringes a little when she catches sight of her disfigured skin in the mirror. She averts her eyes from Roy now, glancing down at the floor. “Thank you.”

Roy holds his arms out to her, and Riza moves to sit on his lap. She loves the closeness and sense of security this brings. “What else can I do?” he asks. “I want to make this good for you.” One of his hands comes to rest on her thigh, and she can feel the warmth of his palm through the thin fabric of her knee-length skirt. It’s enough to make Riza wish that Roy would tug up the hem, or slip his hand underneath it, to touch her bare skin. 

She squirms, a little restless, and places her hand on his back. Riza can’t bring herself to look him in the eye. Her past lovers had all acquiesced without a second thought to this request. But she hadn’t been as close to any of them. None of them knew her like Roy knows her. Like he’s always known her. 

“Call me your sweetheart,” Riza manages to say, as she stares at the wall. “Or  _ honey,  _ or  _ love,  _ or anything. Good girl, little bird, princess - I don’t care what terms you use. Just tell me that I’m yours, and how good I am, and that I make you feel good. Or tell me that I’m just right, just the way I am. I don’t - the specifics don’t matter.”

The rest of the words stick in her throat.  _ Just be kind to me, and make me feel like I’m loved.  _

The muscles of Roy’s back tense underneath her hand, and Riza wishes that he wasn’t so perceptive. “I--” He stops abruptly, a muscle in his jaw twitching, and she is briefly afraid that he will refuse, or judge her for what she wants. Then he inclines his head. “All right. I can do that.” 

Riza smooths his unruly hair down and kisses him on the temple. Roy looks at her, and for just a second, she catches the sorrow, the pity, in his dark eyes. The understanding of how broken parts of her are, deep down, underneath it all. Then he cradles her face in his hand, and pulls her in for a kiss. It is slow and sweet and gentle, and it encapsulates everything she asked him to express, and more.  _ My heart.  _ Riza can hear the words, just as clearly as if Roy spoke them aloud.

They finally draw apart, and she gives him a small smile, her earlier pain receding. Riza runs her fingers through his hair, admiring how silken and thick the locks are between her fingers. “What do you like?” 

Roy smirks. It’s the old, cocky, self-assured smirk she knows so well - the particular one that always precedes a bad joke. “Well, being in the same room as you is enough.”

Riza shoves him playfully. “Be serious.”

“I am being serious.” Roy winces in mock discomfort, rubbing his chest. 

“It’s fine if you want to make me guess what I should do for you.” Riza traces her knuckles down the length of his thigh, a feather-light touch. “I have some ideas, anyway.”

She almost laughs at the expression on Roy’s face, and how he visibly bites the inside of his cheek to stop himself from commenting on the specifics of her ideas. He takes her hand, intertwining their fingers together. “You’ll have to be patient with those ideas a little while longer. Until next time.”

Riza raises an eyebrow. “Next time?” Warmth blossoms in her chest. Roy makes a small sound of affirmation, and she fights the urge to smile, to beam, at the idea of  _ next time.  _ At the idea of doing this with him again and again; of this becoming a regular part of their relationship.

“Next time, at least,” Roy amends. He trails his fingertips down her arm, tracing the bare skin revealed by her sleeveless blouse. It sends goosebumps rising on her skin. 

Riza rests her forehead against his for a moment. “What are we going to do this time?” 

She has flirted before, with men at bars, with the explicit purpose of finding someone to take her home for the night. There is something very different about this. There is an unspeakable thrill about openly flirting with Roy. Her Roy, her best friend. Flirting had been a tool, before. A way for her to get the attention and praise she craved. She had never found it purely  _ fun,  _ like it is in this moment.  __

Roy curls his fingers around her wrist, and he makes another thoughtful sort of sound. He meets her gaze, and his expression is filled with such intensity, such purpose, that it makes Riza’s breath stutter in her chest. “I want to make you feel good,” he says simply. “I want to make you feel so good that you forget everything else. For a little while, at least. I’ve hurt you, over and over again, and I... I want you to feel pleasure at my hands, for once. Not pain.”

She hadn’t expected that. Riza blinks, taken aback. “I--” She stammers once, uncharacteristically. “Okay.”

“Does that sound good?” Roy asks. 

She appreciates the gentleness, the solicitousness, of the question. Riza nods again. “Yes. Thank you.”

It’s hard for her to find the words for how much this means to her. His dedication in wanting her to feel safe and comfortable, and taken care of. In lieu of a further response, Riza kisses Roy on the cheek, and then on the lips. They trade long, slow, tender kisses for several minutes, and she doesn’t think she will ever get enough of this. Of the warmth of Roy against her, his hand on her leg, his other hand resting on hers, and how good and how right it feels to be like this with him. It feels just as natural as working alongside him, and being his friend, companion, and Captain. 

It doesn’t feel wrong. It doesn’t feel forbidden. It doesn’t make her feel shame and guilt right alongside her desire. Riza kisses Roy, and all she feels, with every heartbeat (even more than the desire kindling inside her; even more than the heat that warms her in a comforting, gradual way), is  _ right, right, right. _

She curls her hands in the smooth fabric of his shirt, and eases both of them down onto the bed. Roy rests his hand on the curve of her waist, on her satin blouse, and Riza tugs him half on top of her. She’s never quite outgrown her hunger for touch. She’s just gotten better at managing it. Roy’s proximity now; the easy access they have to touch one another and be touched, makes her toes curl with delight. 

Riza loses all track of time as they kiss. She caresses Roy’s back and arms, appreciating the hard muscles there. She loves hearing the way his breath hitches with contentment and pleasure when she touches him. There is something oddly familiar about the way Roy reacts to touch, about the way he can’t seem to get enough of it either. Riza wonders if he has gone through a long period of lacking that sort of physical closeness, too. 

It’s the height of self-indulgence, and purely addictive. She doesn’t think anyone has taken this much time before to simply kiss her, with her clothes still on. Roy strokes the curve of her waist, and pushes her hair away from her neck and collarbones, tracing her collarbones with his fingers, but he doesn’t slide his hand up her blouse. 

When they take a small break, a little breathless, Riza sits up. She pulls her blouse over her head, leaving herself in just her bra and white lace skirt. The bra is a basic nude satin, but Roy stares nevertheless. His gaze sweeps over her, from her tousled hair to her blush, and down to her body. “You’re so beautiful,” he says, at last.

It is such a sweet, unguarded sentiment, almost innocent. Riza smiles. She usually takes her bra off fairly quickly, because she knows that men like and want that the most (or they remove it for her). But Roy just takes her in his arms. He takes a moment to remove his glasses, setting them on the bedside table, before kissing the top of her head, running his hands over her arms. Riza leans into him, tilting her head back as he kisses down her neck, nuzzling against her throat. He must have shaved more than twelve hours ago. The rasp of barely-there stubble is absolutely delicious on her skin. 

Roy pauses at the hollow of her throat, near her collarbone. “Good?” His voice is a little rougher than usual, with exhaustion or desire or both, and Riza loves it. 

“Good,” Riza affirms. “But you don’t have to be quite so gentle.” She braces her hands on his legs and looks up at him, and she decides to take a little, flirtatious risk. “Kiss me the way you’ve always wanted to.”

Roy takes the back of her neck in his hand. His grip is firm, but not forceful. Riza gives him permission with a look, and then he dives in, kissing her neck and throat hard, nibbling on the sensitive skin, applying the right amount of pressure. Riza gasps, falling back down onto the bed with a moan of pleasure. Roy smirks against her skin, before continuing to kiss and nibble on her neck, on the soft, sensitive spot between her neck and shoulder. 

He pushes her bra straps down, off her arms, but only to caress and kiss her shoulders. His palms are warm, calloused, and Riza feels the touch on her bare shoulders all the way down to the peaks of her breasts. She arches her back, starting to feel ready for him to move downward some more, but Roy moves up instead, nipping at her earlobe. He finds a new spot she likes, just underneath her ear, and Riza almost trembles as he couples that with stroking the backs of his fingers down her stomach.

She pushes him off without real force, and Roy straightens, sitting up. Riza follows him, and her normally deft fingers are a little impatient, a little fumbling, as she unties his tie, flinging it aside. She glances up at Roy to find him smiling at her. “You’ve thought about this often, haven’t you?” she asks dryly. 

“Nightly,” Roy confirms, as she starts undoing the buttons of his shirt. “Also daily.”

“While you were supposed to be doing your paperwork?”

Roy grins, and Riza sighs. There’s no vexation in it. Actually, she’s a little flattered by how deeply she has driven him to distraction. Roy shrugs off his shirt, and Riza places a hand on his chest, gently pushing him down on the bed. She takes a moment (or maybe several moments) to simply admire him, running her hands over his muscled arms, shoulders, and down his chest. 

Roy wears so many layers that, if not for his and Havoc’s frequent discussion of their weightlifting statistics, she wouldn’t have guessed how strong and well-built he was. (And if Riza was entirely honest with herself, she used to suspect that both of them inflated their stats in discussion, for the sake of trying to impress the rest of the unit.) It was only last spring, after Roy had made somewhat of a habit of embracing her, that Riza truly appreciated the strength of his arms and shoulders, and the solid weight of his chest. 

She can admit that she’s always had a weakness for men with muscles. She is strong herself, and she likes the sense of being held by someone with even more strength than she has. Riza strokes her fingers down Roy’s biceps. “All the time you spend in the gym with Havoc has definitely paid off.”

Riza has never seen Roy look so pleased with himself, and that is saying something. He runs a hand through his hair, preening. Normally she wouldn’t let this kind of self-satisfaction slide without poking fun at him, but considering the time she has just spent admiring him, his smugness is probably deserved. “You know, I hit two-twenty on my bench press the other day.”

“I can tell.” Riza bends down, kissing his chest, just above his heart. Her hair falls forward, spilling over his skin. This is going to swell his ego to even more massive proportions, but it can’t be helped. 

Roy enfolds her in his arms, tugging her down on top of him. “You know, the woman I was interested in picked me up, once. I realized then that I wanted to be strong enough to impress her.”

Riza laughs, kissing him on the cheek. She remembers that day, running a combat drill with her new unit, a couple of months after joining the team. “Well, you finally did.”

Roy raises an eyebrow. “Finally?” 

“You heard me.” Riza pauses. “Maybe we could go to the gym together.”

“That’s a good idea,” Roy agrees amiably. “I could teach you a thing or two.”

Riza kisses him, in part to shut him up, and Roy laughs into the kiss before she distracts him by pressing her breasts against his chest. Her triumph is short-lived, as he wraps his arms around her, turning so that he’s on top again. He kisses her, just underneath her breast, beneath the underwire of her bra, and Riza gasps, grabbing his arm. 

“Not good?” Roy asks. “Are you ticklish?”

“Yes.” Riza pushes her bangs out of her face. “But that was  _ very  _ good.”

Roy reduces her to a state of incoherence that would have embarrassed her, with anyone else, taking his time to trail kisses and nips along her stomach and the curve of her waist, down over her hips. That whole area is impossibly sensitive, which she suspected from her own explorations, skimming her own fingers over her lower abdomen and her hips. Her own touch hadn’t done it justice. It doesn’t compare to Roy. Riza grabs her skirt, and tugs it down, removing it. Normally, she would take a moment to fold it, but the skirt ends up tossed off the bed, joining Roy’s shirt and her blouse. 

Predictably, Roy smirks at his accomplishment as he looks her up and down, satisfied by her current state of undress. Riza kicks him lightly in the leg in reproof, but she arches her back a little, out of sheer enjoyment of being admired by him. Roy looks so very appreciative, and hungry with desire. He rests a hand on her thigh, stroking it from hip to knee and back up again. His fingers skim the sensitive inside of her thigh, and she shivers. It feels good to know that she’s pleasing him. 

“Do you like what you see?” Riza almost doesn’t recognize her own voice. It belongs to the part of her that only emerges during encounters like this; the part that isn’t shy about asking for validation and praise under the guise of being seductive and flirtatious. 

“Yes.” Roy’s voice is a little strained, as he settles himself down over her. Riza can feel how much he does. “Yes, sweetheart.” 

He kisses her, hot and hard and hungry, with just as much intensity as he had in the tunnels underneath Central, before the Promised Day. Riza wraps her arms around his shoulders and throws one leg over him, turning them both on their sides. Roy grabs her thigh, the grip just rough enough to be satisfying, and pulls it up on top of his hip. His other hand tangles in her hair, pulling it as they kiss, but this grip is careful and gentle. The juxtaposition between restraint and roughness pushes all of Riza’s buttons in the best way possible. She’s starting to lose her grip; starting to feel rational thought and calm restraint become subsumed by desire and want. 

This was one of the parts of sex that she found a little frightening, before. How she lost control. How another part of her entirely took over, turning her into someone she didn’t quite recognize. Someone eager and wanton and lacking in self-restraint; hungry and desperate to be satisfied. 

It is as strange as ever to feel that happening, to be aware of sliding down that treacherous, slippery slope. But it isn’t frightening, now. She trusts Roy. She is safe, and in good hands, with him.

To Riza’s surprise, he turns her over, onto her front. He brushes her hair to the side, fully exposing her tattoo, and her burn scars. Riza shifts, suddenly self-conscious. She likes when men touch her back. It’s one of the fastest ways to make her melt. But she’s never let any of them look at her or kiss her there, and she doesn’t want to inflict that on Roy. “You don’t have to--” she starts. 

“Shh.” Roy kisses the nape of her neck, and Riza falls silent.

She buries her face in the pillow, unable to hold back a moan as he traces his fingers over her shoulder blades - steering clear of the burn scar - and down her spine. She’s been in this position with him twice before. When Roy studied the Flame Alchemy array, and when he scorched it off her back, rendering it illegible. The second time, Riza had been too frightened and shaken to register anything besides terror. But the first time, when she was sixteen, when she imagined Roy stroking her back and kissing down her spine… It had just been a flicker, quickly suppressed. It was still the first time she’d ever felt anything approaching desire.

Roy’s touch stops short of the hooks on her bra, and Riza lifts her head, looking at him over her shoulder. “You can take it off.”

He unhooks her bra a little clumsily. Riza wriggles free of it, discarding it to the floor, before settling back down in bed. Everything that they’ve done tonight has had more of an effect on her than she realized. Her body is so sensitized that the light friction of her breasts against the bedspread makes her bite her lip. The thought of turning around again, and letting Roy touch her, is almost too much. 

No one has ever taken things slow like this. No one has ever given her a significant amount of time before taking her bra off, and taking her breasts in their hands, touching them, burying their faces in them. (Maybe it’s her fault. She has never felt comfortable enough to ask for a little more time; or for her partners to pay more attention to the rest of her body first, to get her completely ready and eager for that next step.)

Roy braces his hands on her waist. Slowly, deliberately, he kisses up her spine, to the nape of her neck. Riza muffles her satisfied little sounds in the pillow beneath her, reaching up to hug the pillow. She revels in the touch; in the sensation of being pinned between Roy above her and the bed beneath her. 

Roy kisses the top of her head, and Riza rolls over, too aroused to be self-conscious. He stares, taking her in, and the expression on his face makes her toes curl again. She’s no stranger to being the object of lust, of desire. It gives her a rush, though she’ll never admit it. But it’s different to have Roy - the only man she’s ever wanted with this kind of blinding, searing intensity - look at her like that. 

Riza watches the movement of his throat as he swallows hard. She extends her arm out to him, silently giving him permission to get closer, and spreads her legs. Roy takes the cue, settling between them, caging her in with his arms on either side of her body. She tilts her neck back, unable to hold back a sharp gasp as he starts stroking the sensitive undersides of her breasts. Roy’s hands still. 

Riza runs her fingers over his back. She loves the warmth of his skin against hers. “Keep going,” she encourages. 

Roy continues, emboldened. He traces her breasts with the backs of his fingers, before taking them in his hands, squeezing them just hard enough to send a sharp jolt of pleasure straight to her core. Riza clutches him close, holding him tight, as he brushes his fingers over her nipples. She bucks her hips against his, unable to hold back a moan, and Roy doesn’t have to ask if that’s something she likes. He experiments with the pressure, with different ways of touching them - rolling them between his fingers, circling them with his thumbs - until her breath comes harsh and ragged. 

Roy lowers his head, rather deliberately ghosting his nose over her breast, coming torturously close to taking her in his mouth, and Riza’s nerves fray. It’s been more than a year and a half since she last had sex. And since spring of last year, she has been too worn out, too dispirited, by everything else taking place to even attend to her own needs with any semblance of regularity. Her sex drive plummeted, in response to the extraordinary stress and strain. She hasn’t been this turned on in a long time. It almost hurts. 

“Roy.” Riza tries to modulate her voice, to no avail. She’s practically breathless with lust. “I need--”

She needs his fingers curling inside her. She needs him to fuck her senseless. She needs to grind herself against him and let the friction between them push her over the edge. She needs  _ something.  _

Roy kisses the soft skin between her breasts, and she runs his fingers through his hair, panting. “Do you want me to touch you? Or--”

Riza arches her hips, tugging her underwear down, kicking it off. Roy follows the movement with his eyes. She considers both options, but dismisses the idea just as quickly. Even with her instruction, it will take him some time to find the right angle and the right speed, and the correct amount of pressure. She doesn’t feel up to waiting. “No. If you don’t mind--”

Roy finds the best possible way to press up against her, and Riza gasps, small and shaky, settling herself back against the pillows. This is good. She’ll be able to move and push herself up against him in the way that feels best for her, and set her own rhythm and speed. “Okay.” She pushes her bangs out of her eyes with a slightly shaking hand. Excitement kindles in her, alongside the arousal. 

“Okay.” Roy kisses her on the forehead, and then he resumes his work. Riza laces her fingers through his hair again as he buries his face in her breasts, and she is too far gone to feel anything approaching self-consciousness as she moans his name. She has the dangerous, out-of-control feeling in the pit of her stomach, in her core, that signifies this could be over much more quickly than she wants. 

Despite her earlier eagerness for release, she tries to restrain herself, tries to grind against him less, to no avail. Roy kisses the hardened peak of her breast almost chastely, his fingers pinching at her other nipple just hard enough to make her even more weak with need. Riza closes her eyes and arches her back, and then the heat and pressure of his tongue sweeping over her, again and again, makes tears come to her eyes. She can barely think, but she prays to last longer, because she wants to savor this.

The movement of her hips is involuntary, and the orgasm that crashes over her is almost painful in its intensity. Riza cries out, louder than she should in an apartment building with thin walls, but she’s beyond caring. She hugs Roy tight to her, and he holds her close, kissing her forehead, her nose, stroking her arms, until the waves of pleasure finally, finally subside. 

Riza opens her eyes, after several moments, and blinks away her tears. She’s still clutching Roy tight, maybe painfully so. It takes a conscious effort for her to release her grip. He rolls his shoulders, but doesn’t utter a word of complaint, and watches her with such tenderness that it makes her throat go dry. He strokes his fingers down her cheekbone. “Did that feel good, sweetheart?”

“So good.” Riza nuzzles against his hand. Her muscles are limp as they always are after an orgasm, but she isn’t fully sated. Not yet. That felt so good that all she wants is to repeat the experience. To come again, with Roy guiding her through every moment of it. “I want it again.”

The request clearly takes him by surprise, but Roy looks pleased. “Good.” He traces his thumb over her bottom lip, very lightly. The touch makes her skin tingle, as much as the way that he’s staring at her lips. “I love watching you like that, my heart.” 

Riza reaches down, undoing his belt with one smooth, practiced movement. It’s been a while since she’s done this, but she leans down and manages her old trick (one that never fails to impress) with reasonable dexterity, undoing the button and zipper of his dress pants with her teeth. Riza brushes her nose against him for good measure, and Roy makes a small, strangled sort of sound. “My offer from earlier still stands.”

“Next time.” Roy stammers on the words, just a little. He pulls her upward, holding her in his arms. 

Riza kisses him on the neck. “I’m free tomorrow night.”

It’s only half a joke. She has never been taken care of like Roy has taken care of her tonight. She wants to reciprocate. She wants to show him exactly how much she loves him, and make every one of the dreams he’s ever had about her come true.

Roy takes her by the hips. “Don’t tempt me,” he warns.

Riza caresses his shoulders, and she hears the undertone of truth in it. This could quickly become dangerously addictive for both of them. They will have to discuss, later, how often it will be safe to indulge in one another like this, and how to keep their affair discreet. She looks up to see Roy gazing at her, unmistakable desire in his eyes.

“What is it?” Riza asks, partially for the thrill of wanting to hear him tell her how badly he wants her.

“Over the years, I’ve thought about having you in every place, in every position, I could possibly imagine.” Roy’s grip on her hips tightens, and slight frustration is evident in his frown. “And now, I can’t make up my mind on how I want you.” He caresses her lower back, and that makes her melt into him. “I’ll let you decide, sweetheart.”

It is a harder question than she imagined it would be. (It’s another question that she hasn’t been asked often.) Riza runs her hands over Roy’s chest as she mulls it over. Being on top feels good, but she has to be in the right mood to fully enjoy it. She never lets anyone take her from behind unless they’re spooning, her back pressed tightly against his chest so that he can’t get a good view of her tattoo and scars. That would be an option for another time, but not tonight. She wants to be able to see Roy’s face, and look into his eyes. 

“I want to feel you on top of me,” Riza decides. Then she falters for a moment, uncharacteristically. “Is that--”

“It’s perfect,” Roy says at once, and he kisses her. “You’re perfect, my love.”

His words break something inside her. Riza pulls him down on top of her, and any of the nervousness she felt earlier tonight, at crossing this line, is long gone. It isn’t sheer lust that banished those nerves. She is comfortable with Roy, and at ease, and it feels right and natural that the two of them should be together like this. They have been intimate for a very long time, for years, even if not physically intimate. 

Roy muffles the sounds he’s making in her neck, but she catches  _ my Riza,  _ just before he kisses her hard. It affects her just as deeply as when he uses his special term of endearment for her; when he calls her  _ my heart. _ Riza reciprocates the kiss with every ounce of passion she has, her hands seeking purchase in his hair, pulling him even closer to her. It feels so good, so unimaginably good, to be this close to him, tangled together and intertwined in every way. She’s faintly conscious of her own words, her whispers of how good this is; her whispered permission for him to give her more, harder, eventually bleeding into  _ please don’t stop, Roy, please don’t. _

“I won’t,” Roy vows. He strokes her hair clumsily, peppering kisses to her lips and cheeks and nose. “I’ll always love you like this. I love you so much, my Riza.”

It is only what she has wanted to hear, what she has craved, for her entire life. It shatters her. Riza doesn’t start sobbing until both of them have finished, until Roy is holding her close, like she has wanted him to for years. He breathes hard, burying his face in her hair. “Riza. That was perfect, sweetheart.”

Riza starts to cry, overwhelmed by the intensity of the physical and emotional release; by his words now and earlier. Roy wipes her tears away and kisses her cheeks, soothing her, and Riza buries her face in his shoulder. “I love you too.” Her voice is a little hoarse from everything that has happened tonight. “I should have told you months ago. Before the Promised Day.” 

“I knew. I’ve always known.” Roy pushes her sweat-damp bangs out of the way, and kisses her brow. “It’s okay.”

He rubs her back until she feels calmer again. Everything inside her is tender and raw and new. ( _ Loved,  _ Riza thinks, and she holds that close.  _ Loved. _ ) 

Riza nestles against Roy, and they gaze at each other in silent understanding for a little while. Roy tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “How are you feeling now?” he asks quietly.

“It’s a little surreal.” Riza rests her hand on his arm. “Not in a bad way,” she hastens to add. “I’ve just - I’ve known you for so long.” 

Roy has been so many different things to her, over the years. He had been the only person, after her mother and before Rebecca, who showed her real kindness and warmth. In Ishval, she felt nothing but heartbreak and resentment and fear when she thought of him. But in the two years after returning from the front lines, Roy re-earned her trust, and became her commanding officer, her friend, her best friend, and finally, her love.

“I understand.” Roy exhales. “Fifteen years. Nearly half my life.”

“Fifteen years has been more than half of mine.” Riza hesitates. “You were my first crush.” It might be ridiculous, to blush about this admission after everything they have done tonight, but her face grows warm, anyway. 

Roy clears his throat a little awkwardly. “I know.” 

“What?” Riza yanks her hand back, mortified. “Was I that obvious?”

“No, not at all.” Roy wraps an arm around her. “I’m just incredibly perceptive.”

Riza narrows her eyes at him. Then she sighs in defeat, pressing her face against the pillow, resigned to her humiliation. “When did you start to think of me as more than your subordinate?” It’s a question that has remained on the back of her mind for months, since last autumn. She has never had the opportunity to ask before. 

Roy winces at the reminder of their positions outside of the bedroom. He runs his fingers through her hair as he reminisces. “Do you remember your first autumn on the unit?”

Riza’s eyes widen. She remembers it very well. She joined the unit in July. Late summer and autumn brought her the subtle joy of finding friendship, warmth, and acceptance with her new unit. Autumn faded into a long winter, and she fell in love with her commanding officer. But-- “That was eight years ago,” she says slowly. 

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” Sorrow flits across Roy’s expression, probably brought on by a memory of Hughes. Riza rests a comforting hand on his arm. He takes her hand, and kisses the inside of her palm in silent gratitude.

“Eight years.” Riza struggles to comprehend the enormity of it. Roy has wanted her for the better part of this decade. “If you knew how I felt for you, why did you never say anything?” she presses. “Or do anything? We could have had one another for the past eight years.” 

All of those years of being in love with someone who she thought didn’t reciprocate her feelings - she could have been spared that. It would have been ill-advised, and it would have been risky, but they were capable of being discreet. She would have gladly given Roy her love and warmth, and everything, everything, he wanted from her. 

“Because I was your commanding officer.” Roy looks her in the eye. “I didn’t want to take advantage of you.”

The words he left unsaid hang between them. Riza takes a deep breath, and nods. “What changed last year? Things between us started to feel different last spring, even before we moved to Central.”

Last spring. When Scar arrived in East City, and Shou Tucker maimed Nina, and Scar murdered them both. Scar is an ally now, someone Riza trusts, but the memory still fills her with pain. She wept in Roy’s office, and he took her into his arms and held her close, and wiped her tears away. The memory of Nina, trapped in the dog Alexander’s body, still stings. 

(Nina had her childhood, and her future, taken from her. She will never grow older, find family in her friends, and find someone to love her the way she deserved.)

Roy stares at her, lost in thought. “I don’t know. I guess I was starting to crack, a little. Seven years is a long time to not act on your feelings. To not take what you want. But you know all about that, too.”

“I do,” Riza acknowledges.

“We were all a little tense, with everything that was happening with Scar. And then the Shou Tucker incident….” Roy shakes his head fractionally. “You were so upset. All I wanted to do was to take care of you, like Hughes would be able to take care of Gracia if she was distraught. And I couldn’t. I couldn’t do anything for you. It made me - I don’t know. I just... snapped.”

“Yes. You do that, sometimes.”

“I went home that night, had a few drinks, and I thought, to hell with it. The anti-fraternization regulations, and my scruples. I told myself that we could be discreet, and that maybe it wouldn’t be taking advantage, because I loved you. I told myself that it was more acceptable now that you were twenty-six - or twenty-five, that spring - and not nineteen anymore.” Roy sighs. “The things we tell ourselves. The justifications we make. I still don’t know… If I heard of another General who slept with his subordinate, who also happened to be a woman younger than him, I would think he was despicable.”

“For the record, I agree with both of the points you made earlier,” Riza says firmly. “And my opinion counts for something.”

Roy takes her hand, intertwining their fingers together. “Then Hughes was murdered.” He can barely say the words. “I forgot about anything besides uncovering the conspiracy. But whenever I surfaced a bit, I wanted you. I just…” He closes his eyes. “I just didn’t surface often. You know how everything played out from there.”

“I do.” Riza strokes her thumb over the back of his hand. “And here we are.”

“Here we are,” Roy echoes.

They look at each other for a little while, and Riza steels herself for the conversation ahead. “Where do we go from here?”

“I think that we’ll go where we would have, if the rest of last year had played out normally. If Hughes hadn’t…” Roy rubs his temples, weary. “I want to keep doing this. I want us to be able to love one another. I never want to be away from you, or unable to be with you, again.”

Riza kisses him on the nose. “I do, too.”

Roy looks like he’s marshaling his composure for what he is about to say next. “You know that I’ll never be able to offer you more than nights like this. In the final year of my tenure as Fuhrer-President, I’m going to initiate the process of the war crimes trials for Ishval.” 

Riza knows. It still hurts to hear it spoken aloud. “I know. I’ve always known that.” 

“And you’re all right with it?” Roy reaches out, stroking her hair. 

With being his best-kept secret. When Roy attains the Presidency after Grumman’s planned five years in office, they won’t even be able to spend the night together. As a Colonel, advisor to the Fuhrer-President, the two of them might be able to find a couple of hours alone late in the evening, a couple of nights a week. In Roy’s office, or in the study of the Presidential mansion. But then they’ll go home, alone. 

It isn’t what Riza had dreamed of. ( _ Foolishly, selfishly dreamed of _ , her inner voice corrects, cold and incisive.  _ You knew it wouldn’t happen. You dared to dream, anyway. _ ) __

She takes those dreams, now, and locks them away. The dreams, never spoken aloud to a single soul, of  a modest gray stone house on the outskirts of the city, with brightly flowering wooden boxes outside of each window and an enormous maple tree in the front yard. The dreams of waking up next to Roy every morning and going to sleep beside him every night, and cooking dinner together in the evenings, and sitting on the sofa with a book and reading to their daughter.

“Yes,” Riza says steadily. “I am.”

Roy wavers. “I shouldn’t let you do this.”

“You don’t  _ let  _ me do anything,” Riza replies sharply. “This is a decision that I’m making, and I’m comfortable with it. The real question is, are  _ you  _ all right with this? Yes, we’ll be discreet, but I don’t want to be a liability to you. You’re a Brigadier General now. You’ll continue to work your way up the ranks, and hopefully, in five years’ time, you’ll be the leader of this country. I can’t stand in the way of that.”

“You will never be a liability to me.” Roy’s tone brooks no argument. “You’re my strength. And that’s final.”

Riza ignores the attempt at closing the discussion. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Roy says forcefully. “Like you said, we’ll be discreet. That will only be a real issue once I become the President. You’re forgetting that we’re in the best possible position right now.”

“What?” Riza frowns. “How?”

“The Fuhrer-President is your grandfather, Riza.” Roy pauses, letting it sink in. “Even if rumors spread - which I assume they will, as they always have - Grumman will prevent a hearing or investigation from taking place.”

“Oh.” She  _ had  _ forgotten. Riza pulls the covers around them. She has never taken advantage of her familial connection to Grumman, as the Lieutenant General of East City Command, or now as the Fuhrer-President of Amestris. She spent so long trying to cover up that familial connection that she often thinks of Grumman as two separate entities. Her kindly, eccentric grandfather, and the Lieutenant General. The Fuhrer-President. It’s strange to think that, even in a passive way, she does benefit from the familial connection. 

Roy reaches out, smoothing the frown from her brow. “Don’t look so concerned. It’s not like you’re trying to exploit the situation to your - or our - benefit. Grumman loves you. It’s something to be happy about.”

Riza hugs the blankets closer, feeling even more preoccupied. It’s another reason to be extraordinarily careful. She doesn’t just have her own reputation to be concerned about, or Roy’s. It won’t reflect well on Grumman if the newspapers break a story about his only granddaughter carrying on an affair with his protege. She shudders at the thought. 

Roy sighs. “I hate seeing you look so worried.”

“It’s my job to be cautious. This is the reality of our new situation, and I take it seriously.” 

“I know you do, and I love you for it.” Roy pulls her close, and Riza rests her head against his chest. “We’ll have a good amount of freedom in Ishval. More than we’ve ever had, and more than we ever will again. We shouldn’t get carried away, of course. But there will only be a limited number of Amestrian soldiers there, and four of them will be our own unit.”

“And they know.” A wave of gratitude for the unit’s trustworthiness and closeness sweeps over her. 

“Exactly. They’ll look out for us, as they have for the past years.” The faintest of shadows crosses Roy’s expression, as he rises on his elbow, turning off the lamp. “I think that will be the least of the issues we face when we arrive there.”

Riza closes her eyes. She can’t think of that now. Despite all that weighs on her mind, she is physically and emotionally exhausted, completely spent, and her eyelids are heavy. She’s too tired to even get up and properly get ready for bed. 

“You should sleep.” Roy kisses the top of her head. “I’ve kept you up late enough.”

“We’ve stayed up later, over these past years, planning and working.” Riza smiles faintly.

“I remember the all-nighters we would pull every now and then in East City, before you got Hayate.” Roy looks a little wistful. “That was fun. I liked those quiet nights, with just the two of us in the office. It felt like it turned into our own little space.” 

She had felt the same way all night - right up until sunrise. “Those nights were fine for you,” Riza retorts. “You would just take a nap in your office the next morning.”

“I offered you the sofa. It’s not my fault you were too much of a dedicated worker to take me up on it.” Roy grins at her. “I liked tonight better.”

Riza runs her foot up his leg. “Of course you would,” she says dryly. “So did I.”

Roy kisses her, long and slow, as she cuddles closer against him. “I love you,” he says, when they finally draw apart. “I love you so much that you’re engraved in my soul.” 

“I don’t think I’ll ever get used to you saying that.” Riza still struggles a little bit with saying the words herself. They are still unfamiliar in her mouth, after all these years of only saying them to Black Hayate and Rebecca. “I love you too.” 

“I’ll tell you every day, until you are. I promise.” 

Riza rests her hand on his heart. Roy wraps his arms around her, and she falls asleep feeling safe, and loved.

* * *

_to be continued_

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year! I hope that your 2021 is off to the best possible start.
> 
> As always, thank you so much to everybody who left comments and kudos on the previous chapter. ❤️ I enjoy reading them so much. It's one of the high points of my week. 
> 
> Notes for this chapter--
> 
> I adored the mental image of Roy with glasses, and all of the Team Mustang content.
> 
> I loved writing the scene with Riza and General Armstrong, even though it was brief. I think Riza would have been a fantastic addition to Fort Briggs and protege to the General. 
> 
> I'm really enjoying thinking over the logistical details of the Ishvalan reconstruction project!
> 
> I plead forgiveness for the incredible self-indulgence of the smut & relationship development content. It just felt so good to write, after 215k words, six months of working on this fic, and many chapters of the slow burn. It was lovely to write about Roy and Riza entering this uncharted territory of their relationship together - something they have wanted and waited for for years - and I really enjoyed it. I tried to capture the special, emotional sense of sharing pleasure and intimacy with the person you love and trust. I've been building up to/practicing writing smut with my other royai oneshots, so I hope that it came across well here, with the right emotion and heat. 
> 
> A fun note: This fic crossed 400 pages as of this chapter. To everyone who is following it, thank you. 
> 
> Thank you for reading, and I hope that you enjoyed this chapter too. I would absolutely love to hear what you thought. Any comments will be deeply appreciated. I am also on tumblr @lantur if you would like to connect :)


	21. nineteen

Riza wakes up slowly, peacefully. She is delightfully warm, with her back pressed against Roy’s chest, and his arms wrapped around her, hugging her close. 

She has dreamed of waking up like this countless times. Her dreams didn’t do it justice. 

Riza rests her hands on his arms, and Roy presses a kiss to her hair. “Good morning, sweetheart.”

His voice still has the soft rasp of exhaustion to it. When Riza turns to face him, he looks utterly content as she snuggles against his chest. “Good morning. Did you sleep all right?”

“I did. I think someone else hasn’t, though.” Roy strokes her back. “Hayate’s been whining. I don’t think he’s happy that he’s been shut out of here all night.”

Riza sits up, blinking, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. Remorse wells up inside her. “I’ve never done that to him before.” She’s never had a man over here before either, to spend the night or not. Hayate must have been confused, even though he likes Roy. 

“It’s all right.” Roy eases her back down. “I’ll take him out while I get breakfast for us.”

“Is that a good idea?” Riza mumbles. “I can walk him, and I can make us breakfast.”

“It’s early on a Saturday morning. I doubt there are any journalists or military officers in the area. It’ll be fine.” Roy kisses her on the cheek. He rises, tucking her in, and Riza’s eyes drift shut again.

She lies in a half-asleep, half-awake daze, vaguely aware of the sink running in the bathroom, and then her bedroom door creaking open. Roy greets Hayate, and she realizes, with another pang of remorse, that her pup must have fallen asleep right outside her bedroom door. “Good morning, Second Lieutenant.” 

The front door opens and shuts, after a few minutes. Riza pulls the covers over her head, nestling against her pillow. It takes some time for her to realize that she won’t be able to fall back asleep. She slept well, though, better than she has in a long time. Even her dreams had been peaceful. Her mind and body are completely relaxed. 

The scent of Roy’s shampoo, cedar and citrus, lingers on his pillow. Riza turns onto it and breathes in. It is still hard to believe that any of this is real. 

She finally rises, and allows herself the leisure of taking her time getting ready for the day, without work or Black Hayate demanding her immediate attention. Riza takes a warm shower and wraps herself in a towel, opening her closet and pulling out a seafoam green dress. A few minutes with cosmetics ensures that the marks Roy left on her neck are concealed. 

Riza goes to the kitchen to fix herself a hot cup of jasmine tea. The blinking red message light on her phone catches her attention on her way out, tea in hand. Someone must have called while she was in the shower. 

Hopefully she hadn’t missed an important call. Riza dials her message line. It isn’t Breda, Falman, Havoc, or Fuery’s voice on the other end. Neither is it Grumman’s or Rebecca’s, or Gracia’s. 

“Good morning, Hawkeye. I hope this didn’t wake you up.” Reid clears his throat. “General Hall called me a couple of days ago. He mentioned that you’re establishing a team to work on the reconstruction of Ishval. I thought…” He trails off. “Can you call me back when you get a chance?”

Riza hangs up and rubs her temples. She and Reid haven’t seen one another in a year and a half. Not since December of 1913. 

They aren’t in a relationship. They haven’t been in a relationship since they both left Ishval. They are just friends in the habit of catching up over dinner (and then sleeping together) whenever work puts them in the same city, a few times a year. The back of Riza’s neck prickles with discomfort anyway. The last time they saw one another, Reid tried to convince her to transfer to South City and take the open spot on his unit. She flatly refused.  _ I can’t leave East City,  _ she replied.  _ I can’t leave my unit.  _

He gave her a long look, and Riza hoped he hadn’t guessed at the other reason for her refusal.

Riza glances at the door, and then dials his number. Reid picks up on the third ring. “Hello?”

“It’s Hawkeye. I got your message.” 

“Hawkeye.” Reid’s voice softens just a little bit, just as it always does when he speaks to her. “I wanted to ask you about the Ishvalan reconstruction. I know General Hall is involved.”

“Yes.” A tiny bit of guilt stirs inside her. If not for her history with Reid and her current circumstances with Roy, she would have asked if he and the rest of her former sniper team from Southern Command wanted to be a part of the endeavor as well. 

“Are you taking other volunteers? I would be happy to…” Reid pauses. “And it also might give us a chance to--” He falls abruptly silent, and Riza can imagine himself covering his face with one hand. 

Riza pinches the bridge of her nose, chiding herself for every instance of poor judgment and weakness that led to this situation. In an ideal world, she and Roy and Reid could all be professional about things and coexist in Ras Al-Ayn, working together for the benefit of the Ishvalan reconstruction effort.  _ She  _ would certainly be able to maintain her professionalism, even in an admittedly uncomfortable situation. That may be asking too much from the other two, though. 

“Not for the first wave of reconstruction efforts in Ras Al-Ayn.” It isn’t a lie. “But there’s potential in our second wave in February, in Saidnaya.” 

“All right.” Riza hears the scratch of pen on paper, as if he’s making a note of it. 

She decides to push forward. They may not have been in a relationship, but she should still offer honesty. “I’m seeing someone.”

Reid is silent, and Riza wonders if he is making the connection that the person she is seeing is the reason that he can’t be in Ras Al-Ayn. He sighs, finally. “I’m glad. You deserve happiness.”

“Thank you.” She’s strangely moved by the sentiment. As much as Roy loathes him, as much as Rebecca has had her own reservations about their not-relationship, as much as Riza could never feel for Reid what she felt for Roy - she cared about him, in her own way. Reid had been the first man to give her the kind of attention, comfort, and solace she craved, during the lowest time of her life. It had been wrong for her to crave such a thing, and it had been wrong for Reid to indulge her. At the same time, it had been a need, and he had met it for her. “You do too.” 

“Take care, Hawkeye.” There is a gentle finality to the words.

Reid hangs up, and Riza sets the phone back on its hook. She takes a sip of her tea and stares at the wall for a few moments. Then she shakes herself out of her reverie. Her red message light is still blinking, and she checks her messages again. 

This time, it is Alphonse’s voice on the other line. “Hi, Captain Hawkeye. I hope I’m not bothering you on a Saturday morning. I…” He sounds rather embarrassed, and Edward’s stifled laughter is audible on the other end of the line. “I wanted to ask if you could ask General Mustang something for me. I called the General’s apartment, but then Brother suggested I call here instead, and….um… you could try me at 738-954-2826 if you want. Say hi to Black Hayate for me.”

Riza hangs up and stares off into the middle distance for a little while. She and Roy are evidently doing a very poor job of concealing their relationship, if a couple of teenagers can guess at what’s going on. 

She dials Alphonse’s number. He answers, a little out of breath. She must have caught him doing some therapy exercises. “Hello?”

“It’s Riza. Is everything all right?”

“Everything’s fine! Brother and I are okay,” Alphonse hastens to explain. “I just… I’m getting tired of wearing hospital clothes. General Mustang always looks sharp, so I wanted to see if maybe he could come help me and Brother do some shopping.”

Edward’s aggrieved protest rings out from the background. “I don’t need new clothes! My clothes are fine! Besides,  _ I  _ can help you with clothes shopping, or Captain Hawkeye. We don’t need him _ ,  _ just his car!”

Riza laughs. “I can come by later this morning. The General isn’t here, but I’ll pass on the message. He might join me.”

“Thanks, Captain! See you later!”

Riza hangs up the phone, checking to make sure the red message light is off and no one called her while she was on the line with Alphonse or Reid. The key clicks in the latch, and Roy and Black Hayate enter. Her pup bounds over to her, tail wagging. Riza strokes the soft fur on his head, scratching him behind the ears, and Hayate licks her hand. “Thanks for walking him.”

“Anytime. We stopped by my apartment to pick up some clothes.” Roy comes over to her, and when Riza tilts her face up, he bends down to give her a kiss. “There’s breakfast in the paper bag, too. Bagel sandwiches and fruit.”

“Thank you. That’s perfect.” 

Roy brushes the backs of his fingers down her cheek, and Riza basks in the soft, fond expression on his face. “Did you sleep well?”

“Better than I have in months,” Riza replies, with complete honesty. “I think the last time I had such a restful night was when you stayed over here, late last fall.”

Roy affects a thoughtful expression. “It looks like I’m the common link here.” Riza prods his foot with hers, and he grins. “I’m glad I tired you out.”

“Oh, you’re exhausting, all right.” Riza takes the bag and hands him his bagel sandwich and cup of fruit. 

Roy takes the food with a pout. “That wasn’t exactly what I was going for.”

“Well, what’s what you’re getting.” 

They sit close to one another to eat. Riza leans against Roy’s shoulder, while Black Hayate settles at his feet. “I bought a few more clothes over from my place,” Roy says, with his mouth full. “They’re in the other bag. I thought, if you don’t mind…”

“You can put them on the same shelf in the closet as your other things. I’ll hold off on packing those until we’re close to moving out.” 

“Thanks.” Roy puts his arm around her shoulders. She can tell, from his smug demeanor, that he’s getting ready to tease. “I bought a couple more of my shirts too, for you to sleep in.”

Riza rolls her eyes skyward. “I’m never going to hear the end of that, am I?”

“Never,” Roy agrees happily. 

“Speaking of clothes, Alphonse called me this morning. He wanted to know if you would help him shop for some. He’s tired of hospital clothes, and he said you always look sharp. I was planning on heading to the hospital after we’re finished with breakfast.” 

“He said that?” Roy straightens his collar, visibly pleased with himself. “Ah, yes, of course he said that. I’m the best dressed person he knows. I’d be happy to help him find some decent clothing. Maybe we can all convince Fullmetal to find something less of an eyesore than his usual fare too.”

Riza leans in and kisses him on the cheek. 

“What was that for?” Roy holds her closer. “Not that I’m complaining.”

“It’s nothing,” Riza says. 

-

The two of them spend the subsequent few hours with Edward and Alphonse at a selection of menswear boutiques - Margiela, Zenetti’s, and Fennix. Roy is in his element, lecturing Alphonse about different fits, styles, fabrics, and colors. Alphonse proves to be a fascinated and eager student. Both of them go off on several long tangents about the texture of different fabrics, Roy lecturing while Alphonse rubs his hands against fabrics. “I love this!” Alphonse strokes a scarf, his eyes glowing. 

Roy checks the label on the scarf. “That’s one hundred percent cashmere. Just what I thought. You’ll want cashmere for your scarves, and Merino wool or cashmere for your sweaters. Cotton blends will suffice for athletic wear, and one-hundred percent cotton, ideally supima, for your button-downs. Fullmetal, Hawkeye, can either of you take notes on this for him?”

“Ugh.” Edward grimaces, as Riza dutifully takes notes in the journal she tucked into her satchel bag. “You’re a bad influence.”

“I am a great influence!” Roy snipes back. “In any case, I’m glad that you’ve taken an interest in how to present yourself well, Alphonse. Looking cultured and sophisticated will be an asset to you in your travels. You’ll be meeting lots of new people, and you’ll want to make a good first impression. Also, ladies love a well-dressed man. Isn’t that right, Captain Hawkeye?” 

Roy smirks at her over his shoulder, and Riza narrows her eyes at him. “Don’t listen to him, Alphonse. Ladies and gentlemen love a man with  _ substance _ .” 

Edward is exasperated by it all, but Riza convinces him to try on several new button-down shirts, traveling coats, and pants anyway. “Camel, brown, and olive green suit you.” She holds up various articles of clothing next to Edward. “They complement your hair and skin, and your eyes. Light blue, too.” Riza taps her finger on her chin, mulling it over. “That should also have the convenient side effect of bringing out Winry’s eyes.” 

Edward turns bright red. He still takes the light blue button-down into the fitting room with him. 

Some hours, a lunch out, and a great deal of money later, Riza and Roy drop Edward and Alphonse off at the hospital. Edward staggers a little under the combined weight of his and Alphonse’s bags as they head back into the hospital. Alphonse looks steadier on his crutches than he had even the previous week. 

“It was nice of you to come with us,” Riza says, as she drives them back to her apartment. “Should I drop you back off at your place?”

Roy gazes out the window. “That’s the kind of thing that Hughes would have done for them. So I figured that I could.” 

They come to a red stop light, and Riza reaches out and squeezes his hand. Roy checks their left and right, and the rearview mirror, finding all areas clear. Then he lifts her hand to his lips for a kiss. “I don’t want to impose on you, or to act irresponsibly. But I think we could spend the rest of the day and night together, if you’re up for it. I’ll have to leave before sunrise tomorrow.” He pauses. “I just thought it would be nice for us to take this one day for ourselves.” 

The light changes. Riza presses on the accelerator, keeping her eyes on the road, and weighs the proposition. She can’t help but smile. “Yes,” she says. “I agree.” 

-

The two of them settle in to work as they always do, cuddled together on the sofa. They’re a couple of hours in when Roy suggests that she sit on his lap while they map out the necessary infrastructure for water mains and sewage lines. Riza refuses, saying that he’ll get distracted. 

“I’m a professional, Hawkeye,” Roy claims. “I would never get distracted by you.”

Riza raises an eyebrow. “That’s not what you said last night.”

She’s interrupted by the phone ringing, and she moves to answer it. “You’re more popular than I am,” Roy observes, looking mildly perturbed by this revelation.

“With good reason,” Riza retorts, before answering. “It’s Hawkeye.”

“Good afternoon, my dear,” Grumman says amiably. “I know this is short notice, but I think I’ll be finished with my work early today. Would you like to join me for dinner at eighteen-thirty hours? Tell Mustang that he’s welcome too.”

“That sounds good, sir. I’ll see you at eighteen-thirty.” Riza hangs up the phone and scowls at it, before turning to Roy. “How is it that both Alphonse and Grumman just assumed that you would be with me today?”

“They know us too well. Is Grumman stealing my date for the evening?” 

Riza returns to the sofa. “Yes. You’re under no obligation to join me, but he invited you too.”

She has visited Grumman for dinner once since he fully moved into the presidential mansion in mid-May, a few weeks ago. Grumman invited Roy then, too, but he declined in favor of going out with Havoc, Breda, Falman, and Fuery instead.  _ Tell the Fuhrer-President I was busy,  _ he said. His clipped, terse tone revealed that the wound of Grumman’s betrayal still stung. 

Roy removes his glasses, pressing the heels of his palms to his eyes; a tell of frustration. “Well, I’d be fine not seeing him until we come back from Ishval, whenever that’s going to be.”

“He’s the President, Roy, and you and General Armstrong are one of a handful of Generals remaining in this country,” Riza points out matter-of-factly. “I know that you’re hurt by what happened, but you’ll have to get used to working closely with him.”

“I know. I have to stay in his good books so that he chooses me as his successor, and not Armstrong.” Roy crosses his arms over his chest. “I figure that he’s also my Captain, my closest friend, and my girlfriend’s grandfather, so that’s an extra reason I’ll have to get along with him. I don’t want to make things tense for you.”

“I’ve dealt with worse.” Riza takes a sip of her tea. Nothing in her demeanor betrays how her heart leapt at Roy’s casual description of all that she is to him. She has never been anyone’s girlfriend before. Not really. Even when she had been embroiled in her relationships with Reid in Ishval, and Bresler, in her final semester at the Academy, she hadn’t thought of herself as being a girlfriend to them. All that they had been to one another was a sordid secret.

Roy glances up from his report on sewage lines, catching her gaze. “What is it?” 

Riza shrugs, self-conscious. “I’ve never had a boyfriend before.” She stumbles a little on the word. It sounds almost juvenile, considering how devoted she and Roy are to one another. She has noticed how Roy has compared their relationship to Hughes and Gracia’s a few times, over the past months. That carries an almost incomprehensible enormity. Riza has turned it over and over in her mind for weeks. 

She would marry Roy in a heartbeat, if they could. He is the most important man in her life - past, present, and future. If they weren’t who they are, he could be her husband, and she could be his wife. They’re certainly the right age for it. (Some would say  _ past  _ the right age. Riza will be twenty-seven in September, just a few months from now, and Roy will be thirty-one in October.) 

Roy draws her close, and presses a kiss to the top of her head. “It’s been a very long time since I was that to anyone,” he says quietly. “I don’t think I was very good at it, anyway. But I’ll be the best I can be, for you.” 

Riza is startled enough that she lets the sweet words pass. “I didn’t know you had a girlfriend.”

“It was a long time ago. I met her when I was sixteen, and we dated until I was twenty. Her name was Ivy. The last time I saw her was--” Roy hesitates. “Just before I came to Hawkeye Manor to talk to your father.” 

“I see.” It has been almost eleven years exactly since that nightmarish afternoon. Still, for a few terrible seconds, Riza is transported through time. She is sixteen, standing at the stove and making tea for Roy, when he calls for help, his voice hoarse with panic. She rushes to Father’s study, flinging the door open, and--

Riza takes a deep breath.

Roy strokes his thumb along her upper arm, trying to soothe her. “I got my State Alchemist certification after that, and deployed to Ishval immediately after.” His arm tightens around her. “Dating was the last thing on my mind after I got back.”

Riza inclines her head. “I understand. You had goals to work toward.” 

Riza doesn’t mention the self-hatred that only she and Hughes saw in him. That same self-hatred was part of the reason she hadn’t even attempted to find a real relationship, either. She didn’t deserve that kind of joy. Even from a more pragmatic perspective - Riza knew that any relationship she entered into would have to end when the war crimes trials reached their natural conclusion. It seemed cruel, to put a romantic partner through such a thing. 

“It wasn’t just that. I couldn’t date.” A flicker of pain crosses Roy’s features. “I didn’t - I haven’t - since Ivy. At first, it was because of what we did in Ishval. Then, it was because I just wanted you.”

It takes a moment to sink in. This admission, coupled with the one he made about having feelings for her for the past eight years. Her silent observation that Roy seemed just as eager for touch and physical affection, just as responsive to it, as she was. She had wondered, last night, if he went through a long period of lacking physical closeness too. 

Riza rests a hand on his back and rubs it. She is, briefly, at a loss for words. “Sorry.” Roy stares down at his hands. “I know that’s strange.”

“Don’t apologize.” Her tone brooks no argument. “What we did in Ishval, and the way that we reacted to it--”

Roy’s self-hatred and pain made him withdraw into himself. Her own self-hatred and pain drove her to seek comfort, distraction, and validation with whoever would give it to her. 

Riza can’t find the words. She leans against Roy, resting her head on his shoulder. “I’m glad we have each other now.”

Roy takes her hand, and intertwines their fingers together. “I am, too.”

-

Later, after Roy takes a shower and Riza walks Black Hayate, they get ready for dinner together. Roy admires his own reflection in the mirror, clad in his new dress shirt, while he ties his new tie. “Riza. Do you like this?”

“You look fine like that,” Riza replies, rather intentionally, while she styles her hair into a simple half-up and half-down style. 

“Hmm.” Roy nudges her. “You probably think I look handsome.”

Riza tries to step on his foot, and Roy evades her with surprising agility. He leans against the closed bathroom door, regarding her with such warmth that she looks away, trying not to blush. “Well, you look lovely.”

Riza smooths a crease from the chiffon of her skirt. This dress is new. It has a simple silhouette, knee-length, with short, fluttering sleeves. “Thank you.” 

She puts on her grandmother’s pearl earrings and necklace, and Roy helps her secure the clasp behind her neck. He lets his touch linger, deliberately, at the nape of her neck. Riza suppresses a shiver. Roy hugs her from behind, pressing her back to his chest, bowing his head slightly to nuzzle against her ear. “What do you think about being late to dinner?” 

Riza looks up and over her shoulder at him. Under normal circumstances, she would offer a dry rebuttal to an invitation like that. But Roy does look very good in the new shirt and tie. More importantly, she still can’t get enough of the fact that they can do things with each other now that they have longed for over the past eight years. They barely scratched the surface last night, and that makes her bite her lip. 

“We should be on time for dinner.” Riza trails her fingers down his forearm, admiring the rich, dark forest green of his dress shirt. “We shouldn’t stay out too late, though.”

Roy’s eyes practically gleam with anticipation. “That’s a good plan, Captain Hawkeye.”

Riza picks out a pair of high heels from her closet, stepping into them. “I’m full of them, General Mustang. I think my outfit needs one final touch, though.”

“What?” Roy teases. “A second gun, strapped to your other thigh?”

Riza shakes her head in mock pity. “I carry my second gun in the inner pocket of my coat. You should know that.”

She opens the door and crosses over to her bedside table. The small brown box is just where she left it, in the top drawer. She hasn’t worn the ornament inside since her last dinner with both Grumman and Roy, back in East City, before her unit’s reassignment to Central. 

Riza takes the box over to him, now. “Will you put this in my hair?”

Roy smiles, so broadly and genuinely that it lights up his entire face, making the corners of his eyes crinkle. It makes Riza think that she likes this much more than the lines of strain that are normally apparent on his brow, and around his eyes. “Of course.”

She opens the box for him, admiring the comb’s golden tines, and the dozens of inlaid gems in warm, sparkling citrine. Riza turns, and Roy gently places the comb in her hair. She closes her eyes, savoring the sweet domesticity of the evening. She never even allowed herself to imagine moments like this, with Roy helping to clasp her necklace, or style her hair. 

“Perfect.” Roy places his hands on her shoulders. “I missed seeing this on you.” 

Riza turns to face him, patting the comb to ensure that it rests securely in her hair. “Once or twice, during the months we were separated from one another, I took it out, just to look at it.” Her face goes warm at the confession. “I remembered when we would go to Grumman’s for dinner, in East City. And the evening you gave it to me.”

“That’s what I wanted, when I bought it for you,” Roy admits. “I wanted you to have something beautiful. Something that made you think of me.”

Riza takes his hand. “You’re never far from my thoughts. Nice gifts or not.”

Roy beams. “You know, I could get used to you saying such sweet things to me.”

“Don’t,” Riza reproves. “I’m allowing myself to be sentimental just for this one weekend.”

“Sure.” Roy isn’t entirely successful at holding back his laugh, as the two of them bend down to offer Black Hayate goodbye pats. 

Riza eyes him suspiciously, locking the apartment door behind them. “What is it?”

“I still can’t believe that I gave you the comb, and you didn’t pick up on how I felt about you.” Roy keeps his voice low. “I had no idea that my clever Lieutenant could be so oblivious.”

Riza winces. “I thought the same thing, back in fall. Maybe there is something to be said about being too close to a situation to see the truth of it.”

They fall into easy conversation for the entire drive over to the Presidential mansion. As they approach, Roy notices the way her fingers tighten on the steering wheel. “Hey,” he says, abruptly dropping their previous conversation about the religious controversy in Lugano. “It’s all right.” 

Riza makes the effort to relax her grip on the wheel. “I know. I thought tonight would be better than last time.” She pulls into the drive, shifts the car into park, and wipes her palms on the skirt of her dress. Last time, she nearly had a panic attack while making the walk to the front door of the mansion. 

“You visited this place dozens of times when it was Pride and Wrath’s home.” Roy leans across to open the door for her. “It makes sense that it’ll take more than a couple of times to erase your discomfort with it now.”

They get out of the car. In a moment of weakness, Riza wishes that Roy could take her arm, or that she could take his hand. But the mansion’s grounds are patrolled by a company of guards, and outside of the four walls of her apartment, they aren’t Roy and Riza. They are the General and his Captain, and they maintain a completely professional, remote distance from one another as they walk. 

Shadows still set her nerves on edge whenever, wherever, Riza sees them. She can normally tamp down her fears. Her anxiety is only heightened to agonizing levels here, on the grounds of her first encounter with Pride. She keeps her gaze fixed straight ahead, and keeps her steps from faltering, even as a small part of her curls up in a frightened ball. 

“How are you feeling, Captain?” There is concern in Roy’s tone. Riza catches him flexing his right hand, as if restraining himself from putting it on her back.

“I’m fine, sir,” Riza says levelly.

They walk, and the only thing she hears is their steps on the stone floor. There is no soft, shifting sound, like snakes slithering across the stone. Riza exhales, and it comes out sharp, slightly trembling. “I wish Edward had destroyed him.”

She has kept this to herself ever since she learned the truth about what happened to Pride. She normally trusts Edward’s instincts. She can normally see where he is coming from, and respect the motivations for his choices. But not this time. 

“I know.” A muscle in Roy’s jaw tightens. “Grumman will do a good job of watching Pride, though. He’ll take care of the situation if it proves to be a problem. He has what it takes to do that.”

Riza can only nod. She schools her expression back to complete impassivity as they approach the front door, with the guards posted at either side. Rebecca vouched for them, and Riza took a day away from her duties with her unit to complete interviews of the entire team of guards as well. Grumman is the Fuhrer-President of Amestris, but he is also her grandfather, and she is able to rest a little easier at night knowing that his guards are competent and trustworthy. 

Grumman himself answers the door, waving them in. He hugs her and tells her that she looks as lovely as always, and he pats Roy on the shoulder and tells him that the glasses suit him. Riza watches the interaction carefully. To her relief, Roy gives Grumman his most charming smile, and a perfectly friendly, laughing response. No one, save for her, would ever guess that there are any lingering hard feelings over what happened in the immediate aftermath of the Promised Day.

Riza hopes that the bitterness does subside in time, for Roy’s sake. He had admired and trusted Grumman as a mentor. (Just like he once admired and trusted her father.) For the sake of Roy’s political ambitions, as well, it serves him to remain close to Grumman. 

(She hopes that the wound can heal for other reasons, too. Grumman is her family, and so is Roy. Perhaps it is the idealistic wish of a naive child, but she wants them all to be at ease with one another.)

Grumman has made the Presidential mansion his own, filling it with the vibrant, eccentric home decor from his former manor in East City. The enormous ornamental vases from Xing, the brilliantly colored woven rugs imported from Aerugo, and the displays of Cretan pottery. The paintings created by several decades’ worth of Amestrian painters turn each wall into a museum gallery. Dozens upon dozens of odd trinkets from towns all over Amestris perch on every available surface, from shelves to end tables. 

It is all familiar to her. It does nothing to make the Presidential mansion less menacing. Riza sits in the study with Roy and Grumman, and even as she converses with them, her shoulders are tight with unease. They have a pleasant dinner discussing the progress of the Ishvalan reconstruction plans, and how Roy’s aunt Chris is doing in Xing. Grumman asks about when Chris and the network of informants will return to Central City, and where the new location of the bar will be. 

Riza detects the slightest hint of possessiveness when Roy talks about Chris’s return and the bar resuming operations at a new location. Chris and the ladies at the bar work for him, and she hopes that Grumman will have the wisdom not to approach Chris to ask if she and the informants can gather information for him as well. 

After dinner, Roy wanders over to the library, and Riza and Grumman retire to his study, as they always do. This study has massive windows, which is a nightmare from a security perspective. Still, Riza can admit that the view of Central City at night is striking. She looks out over the city, admiring the lights; simultaneously scanning the grounds of the Presidential manor for any unusual movement. 

“You look well, my dear.” Grumman folds his arms behind his back. “Happier than usual, somehow.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Grandfather. I’m always happy.” 

Riza couples the lines with her flattest, most stoic expression, and Grumman laughs. “I’m glad to see it.” 

They lapse into a comfortable silence. At least, it is comfortable on her part. Grumman sticks his hands into his pockets, and shifts his weight from foot to foot. “I don’t know how to say this, Riza.”

Riza’s muscles stiffen. She isn’t sure what to expect. A roadblock to their reconstruction plans, or something more personal. “What is it, sir?”

“I can’t help you.” Grumman turns away from her ever so slightly, as if ashamed. 

“With what?” Riza asks, nonplussed. “Does this have something to do with Ishval?”

“No. Don’t worry about that. I promised both you and Mustang my full financial and policy support, and I won’t go back on my word.” Grumman waves a hand vaguely. “It’s the anti-fraternization regulations. I’ve gone over them, and I can’t make any changes to the law.”

She hadn’t expected that. Riza blinks, taken aback. “Sir. Grandfather. I never expected you to do that.”

“That wasn’t the full truth.” Grumman’s expression is pained. “As the head of the military, I can. I could modify the regulations. I could relax them, if not do away with them entirely. But I  _ can’t. _ You wouldn’t know this, since you’re not in Internal Affairs - but there are already dozens of violations every year, at every command center. Some of these are egregious cases, Riza.”

Riza wards the memories off. “Yes. I can imagine.”

“I can’t do anything that would make it easier for this type of behavior to propagate itself. It doesn’t send the right sort of message.” Grumman drums his fingers on the edge of the desk. “I considered requiring soldiers within the same chain of command to disclose relationships to Internal Affairs, fill out some paperwork, and undergo interviews. But if that were the case, what would stop the higher-ranking soldier from coercing the lower-ranking one into being compliant?”

Riza places a hand on his shoulder. “I don’t want you to remove or make any change to the anti-fraternization laws, sir. I never have. In fact, I would oppose such a move.”

Grumman looks up at her, frowning at the honesty in the statement. “You’ve never wished those laws don’t exist?”

“The anti-fraternization laws exist in part to protect lower-ranking, vulnerable soldiers from being coerced into inappropriate relationships with their superior officers.” Fleetingly, Riza remembers insisting to Roy that there had been no coercion. That she had wanted it, in both cases. “I would never want to strip that protection away, or make it less meaningful. Even if it would make my life easier.” 

Grumman studies her, and then he sighs. “You’re such an unselfish young woman.”

Riza thinks back to the dreams she so recently locked away. Of a long, happy future, without facing imprisonment - or worse - for her crimes. She tries to smile, but there is a hint of bitterness in it. “I’m not sure I agree with you.”

Grumman takes her arm, and they settle down in the armchairs across from the fireplace. “How are you doing otherwise? Would you like me to send you the staff I used to help pack up and move all of my things from East City? I’ll handle all the arrangements.”

“That’s thoughtful, sir. I might take you up on that.” Riza hesitates. “I’m a little nervous about the meeting that the General, Major Miles, Scar, and I are attending this Monday.”

“With the Ishvalan community leaders.” The corners of Grumman’s mouth turn down. “I understand your apprehension, my dear. I would feel the same way.”

“I - we - deserve their hatred. Their censure. And any distrust that they have of our motivations, our capabilities, and of us, ourselves. I know that.” Riza stares down at her hands. “I should be able to face that head on. And yet, I’m afraid of… of looking all of them in the face, and what I’ll see when I do. I’m being a coward. I’m being weak.” 

“You’re human,” Grumman replies, at once. “Don’t punish yourself for having human emotions. The fact that you’re a strong woman doesn’t preclude you from feeling things like this. It doesn’t make you less principled. It’s what you do with those feelings that matters.”

This is the compassion and kindness she craved so deeply, during all of her years of growing up. Not for the first time, Riza wishes that she and Grumman found their way to each other a decade earlier. “Thank you.”

“You’re walking into that meeting - on their own home turf, in their community - with the purpose of listening to them and deferring to their perspective. That shows courage.” Grumman reaches out and takes her hand between both of his own. “Call me when it’s over, or come to my office. We’ll have a nice afternoon tea.”

Riza wipes her eyes discreetly. “You’re the Fuhrer-President, sir. You can’t just take a tea break whenever you please.”

“I’m the Fuhrer-President, and if I want to clear my schedule for an afternoon tea with my granddaughter, then by God, I’ll do it,” Grumman declares, and he brandishes his teacup with such ferocity that Riza can’t help but smile. 

-

Riza and Roy return to her apartment, where they are greeted jubilantly by Black Hayate. Riza offers him the large rawhide bone Grumman passed on as a gift to his “grand-puppy” (a ridiculous title that has, unfortunately, stuck). Hayate grabs it, trotting over to his dog bed without a further look at her or Roy. 

“How fickle.” Roy shakes his head mournfully. “I promise I’ll never turn my back on you for food, Hawkeye.”

“You would, and have, abandoned me for the tangerine chicken at Yangtze back in East City,” Riza informs him, with some asperity. 

Roy runs a hand through his hair, mussing the impeccably slicked-back style, and tries to appear remorseful. “That was a long time ago.”

Riza takes his hand, and leads him to her bedroom. She shuts the door behind her, and Roy grins. “I’m glad to see you have no hard feelings.”

Riza pushes him against the wall, her touch firm, but not forceful, and presses her body into Roy’s chest. He smirks and puts his hands on her hips in clear approval of this turn of events. She’s still in her high heels, so she doesn’t even have to turn her face up to kiss him. Riza cups his face in her hands and pours every bit of passion and skill she has into the kiss, nipping at his lower lip, and then tracing it lightly with her tongue. 

Last night’s kisses, and the kisses they shared the night before that, had been dedicated to mutual exploration. It was kissing for the sake of simply being close to one another and enjoying the intimacy of that closeness. 

Riza has something different in mind in mind tonight. She wants to seduce. She wants to make Roy melt, and tremble underneath her touch. She finds a pace that is just intense enough to reduce him to breathlessness, kissing him until he shivers. “Riza,” he whispers, pulling her tight against him. 

A promising first step. She strokes her thumbs down Roy’s cheeks and his neck, attentive to his pulse rate, and then fists a gentle hand in the back of his hair. Riza tugs it just a little bit, and Roy obligingly tilts his neck back for her. She kisses him there with the same thoroughness that he gave her last night, breathing him in between kisses. “I love the smell of your aftershave,” Riza confesses, nuzzling her nose against his throat. “I always have. I love that you haven’t changed it since you lived with us so long ago.”

“I didn’t know you noticed,” Roy comments, a bit wonderingly. Then, “That was stupid of me. Nothing gets by you.”

Riza nods in agreement as she undoes his tie. She begins unbuttoning his shirt, pressing kisses to every inch of newly revealed skin, all the way down to his waist, and then back up again. She raises an eyebrow, easing Roy’s shirt off and folding it neatly, while keeping her eyes on him. “It’s interesting. You blush all the way down to your chest.”

Roy raises an eyebrow right back at her. “So do you.” 

Instead of further banter, Riza occupies herself with admiring and caressing his shoulders and chest and stomach. Roy is so delightfully responsive to her touch. His breathing comes faster, and he gazes at her like he can’t believe what he’s seeing. Riza experiments with scratching her fingernails down his back very lightly, and she can almost feel Roy’s knees go weak. She intersperses that with open-palmed strokes down his shoulders and muscled arms, following each caress with a kiss. Riza trails kisses along his collarbones, and then down his chest. His skin is so warm underneath her lips.

Riza removes his belt, and then she sinks to her knees. She presses her legs a little tighter together, almost unconsciously. 

“Riza,” Roy says, a little shakily. She undoes the button and zipper of his dress pants with her teeth, just as she did the previous night. “You don’t have to.”

Riza reflects that it’s sweet of him to say that, even though the desire on his face makes it very clear how much he wants it. She takes a moment to consider the idea that Roy might have fantasized about this as much as she has. “I know.” She looks up at Roy, and strokes her hand down his leg. “I want to.”

The words make his self-control crumble. Roy nods. He runs his fingers through her hair, gently gripping it between his fingers, and Riza relishes the tenderness of the gesture. 

She gives him every bit of her considerable focus and attention, dedicating herself to doing her best work. The thought flits through her mind, there and then gone, that this feels different than it had in the past. Riza hadn’t made a habit of this. When she did this before, the desire to please her partner was purely transactional. She wanted to please, so that she would be praised. So that she would be cuddled and kissed extra afterwards, and told how good she was. 

Perhaps it had been cold of her, or calculating, but she never did this solely for the sake of wanting her partner to feel good. For wanting him to go limp with pleasure, his fingers tightening in her hair, as he whispered her name like a prayer. 

All Riza wants, now, is for Roy to feel good. For him to feel as good, as loved and appreciated and taken care of, as he made her feel last night. 

She loves him. She has loved him for years. She can think of a thousand ways to express that love, and this is one of them.

Roy tilts her face up to his, and brushes his fingers against her cheek. “Sweetheart,” he says. His voice is ragged in a way that lets Riza know that she is having the effect she wants. 

It makes her press her legs tighter together again. Roy lifts her up to her feet and kisses her hard, unzipping her dress, unhooking her bra, tugging her underwear down off her hips. Riza stumbles out of her heels, and they fall onto the bed, exchanging eager, clumsy kisses, desperate to get closer to one another. 

Riza ends up on her side, her back pressed against Roy’s chest. Spooning, like they were this morning, except one of his arms is wrapped around her hips, holding her in place. Her fingers dig into the bedspread, grabbing a fistful of the blankets. Roy strokes her body with the other hand, having learned perfectly from what she showed him she liked last night, and Riza turns her face into the pillows to muffle her moans.

Neither of them last long. They come undone in a mess of  _ I love you _ ’s, gasped to one another. They curl up together afterward, pleasantly exhausted. Roy gently removes the comb from Riza’s hair, and the pins holding her style in place. He unclasps her necklace, and she reaches up to remove her earrings, setting them on the bedside table. 

“I’m glad we did this.” Riza rests her hand on Roy’s heart. It is still beating faster than normal. She knows that she doesn’t have to elaborate on what she means by  _ this.  _ Spending the night together, and waking up together. Sharing breakfast together, and going shopping with Edward and Alphonse, working, and getting ready for a night out together. Having dinner with her grandfather, and falling into bed (or against a wall) afterward. 

For one day, this one, wonderful day, they got to enjoy being a normal couple. 

Roy covers her hand with his own. “I am, too.” 

-

The first thing Riza does when she wakes the following morning is reach for Roy.

She finds the other side of the bed empty. Her eyes drift open. Her palm rests on the other pillow (the one that she has already come to think of as Roy’s pillow.) Riza wraps her arms around herself, slightly bereft. It takes an effort to quell the sensation of loss. 

The bedroom door is open, and Black Hayate is curled up at the foot of her bed, loyally watching over her. She pulls the blankets over herself and sits up, leaning over to give Black Hayate a kiss on the head. 

Riza showers and gets dressed, and leads Hayate into the kitchen so that she can have a glass of water before they head out for their walk. Her normally clear counter has a clean glass sitting on it. Roy must have set it out on the kitchen counter for her before leaving. A single piece of paper rests beside it, and Riza recognizes it immediately as having been torn out from Roy’s journal. 

The message isn’t encoded, or signed. It is only three words, written in handwriting that is as familiar to her as her own.

_ I love you.  _

Riza looks at it for several moments. 

This is evidence, even though it is unsigned. It would be prudent to destroy it. 

Riza folds the paper into a tiny square and carries it into her bedroom. She carefully nestles the note in the nondescript brown box that holds her jeweled comb. Then she closes the lid, shutting the comb and the letter away from view.

-

The meeting with the Ishvalan community leaders is scheduled for ten-hundred hours on Monday. Riza is so nervous that she can only manage to eat a couple of slices of buttered toast for breakfast. She and Roy remain uncharacteristically silent for the entire drive from Central Command to Kassioun, the Ishvalan enclave in the northern part of the city. 

She has never been here before. Neither of them have. The area is unfamiliar to her, but Scar and Major Miles wrote down precise instructions to the Sayyidah Zaynab Temple of Ishvala. Roy reads them to her as she drives. Both Scar and Miles wait outside the small stone building (which is such a far cry from the old photographs of grand, elaborate Ishvalan temples that Riza has seen in history books). Riza parks the car in an alley to the side of the temple. Roy rests his hand on hers, before they step out of the car. “It’s going to be all right.”

His face is pale, his features drawn and tense. He is just as apprehensive, just as heartsick, as she is. Still, his instinct is to comfort her.  _ I love you,  _ Riza wants to say. “Yes, General,” she says, instead. 

They join Major Miles and Scar at the foot of the steps to the temple. “Thank you for meeting us here. I think that sends an important message to the community.” Miles glances at the small cluster of older Ishvalan women huddled around a splintering table at the cafe across the street. A couple of the women stare at them with open curiosity. Wariness and outright hostility registers on the other women’s expressions. 

Roy, Riza, and Miles had spent quite a while in discussion about whether to wear their blue Amestrian military uniforms or not.  _ We  _ are _ representatives of the Amestrian military,  _ Roy pointed out.  _ It seems dishonest, somehow, to try and portray ourselves as people we aren’t.  _

Riza was reluctant to agree.  _ I understand your point, sir. It still seems...insensitive, somehow.  _

Miles was the one to make the final decision.  _ Every single person in Kassioun lost at least one family member to someone wearing Amestrian military blues.  _ He looked down at his own blue coat, a shadow crossing his expression.  _ We shouldn’t walk in there dressed like that. It’ll trigger a thousand terrible memories.  _

So the three of them opted for civilian clothes. Still, her and Roy’s appearance is far from inconspicuous here. 

“Should we take our shoes off?” Roy asks, as they make their way up the stairs and through the double doors of the temple. Riza inhales, picking up on the notes of sandalwood incense. She scans their surroundings, performing a risk assessment, out of force of habit. “Or cover our heads? Those are the customs, correct?”

“We’re going into the community gathering room, not the prayer area, so that won’t be necessary.” Scar indicates the right side of the hallway. “Everyone else is here already.”

Riza gathers all her strength protectively close (building walls around her; a shield; a barrier) as their group enters the room. Four Ishvalans are seated at the large table inside. An older man who appears to be in his seventies, a woman who looks to be around the same age, and a man and woman who both seem to be her own age. 

Riza listens to Scar as he performs the introductions, gesturing respectfully to each member of the group. “Alim Faisal.” This is the older man, who is missing an arm. “Celmira Emani.” The woman, whose mouth turns down on one side in a manner reminiscent of one who has suffered a stroke. “Mahir Nizam.” The younger man, who stares at Major Miles as if he doesn’t know what to make of him. “Kaela Ferran.” The younger woman, who wears her long white hair in a braid over one shoulder. Her gaze lingers on Riza and Roy, and then she looks away quickly, as if embarrassed to be caught staring. 

“The Amestrian contingent,” Scar continues, nodding at the three of them. “Major Kadin Miles, General Roy Mustang, and Captain Riza Hawkeye.”

“The Flame Alchemist and the Hawk’s Eye need no introduction.” Celmira’s speech is halting, but she gives them an unflinching, hard look.

Riza’s throat goes dry. Roy steps in with a response that he has been practicing for years; that the two of them fine-tuned together, back in East City, long before their transfer to Central.  _ As the Fuhrer-President, I’ll want to address the Ishvalan refugees in Amestris as I approve the Ishvalan reconstruction effort.  _ Roy stared down at his hands, too weary to even spin a pen between his fingers, as he almost always did while mulling things over.  _ I can’t make excuses for what happened. I can’t be defensive, no matter what they say about me. About us. I have to be honest, and accept Amestrian responsibility -  _ my  _ responsibility - in full. And even if my words come across as hollow, I have to apologize. _

Roy’s words have little impact on Celmira. Riza sees that. Alim’s expression is inscrutable. Mahir is still wary, guarded, but his attention keeps flickering to Scar in a way that indicates he trusts Scar, even if he is undecided on the rest of them. Kaela has the most open body language. Her arms are at her side, not crossed over her chest or folded in front of her.

The four of them join the Ishvalans at the table, and they begin their discussion. 

Riza reflects, as it unfolds, that she had been right to expect distrust and skepticism. Of their motivations. Of their capabilities. Of them, as people. She had been right to expect their (justified) anger and occasional hostility. 

It doesn’t rub her the wrong way, even though her instinct is normally to be protective toward her General. Both of them know that they deserve every bit of the anger they receive.

(Roy likely killed at least one, maybe several, of Alim, Mahir, Celmira, or Kaela’s friends and family. Riza knows that she may very well have done the same.)

These were the things she expected. These were the realities she braced herself for.

Riza hadn’t expected how difficult it would be to simply look at Ishvalans again. 

She never had cause to visit the Ishvalan enclaves in East City, or Central. It never even occurred to her. How could she go there, to a place she didn’t belong? To a place that was explicitly a sanctuary for the Ishvalans who survived her, and people like her? 

Riza didn’t socialize, outside of spending time with her unit, Rebecca, and occasionally Rebecca’s unit. She didn’t even go to many places, outside of a handful of restaurants, bars, and parks in the vicinity of East City Command and Central Command. Save for Scar and Major Miles, Riza hasn’t seen anyone of Ishvalan origin since the war ended. The last time she looked at any Ishvalans save for Scar and Miles, she had seen them through the scope of her sniper rifle. 

There had been no one of Ishvalan descent that lived in Cecil. None of her fellow cadet class at the Academy was of Ishvalan origin. The only times Riza has ever seen Ishvalans, was to kill them.

Looking at Alim, Mahir, Celmira, and Kaela now - it makes Riza’s insides clench up. It makes her tremble. Just seeing them reminds her of killing. Of training her rifle on dozens and dozens of Ishvalans - combatants, and innocents. So many innocents. It reminds her of pressing her finger down on the trigger and watching her bullet tear through their skulls, shattering them in a mess of blood and bone. 

Riza expected that returning to Ishval, to those blood-soaked sands and scorching desert heat, would trigger her. She hadn’t expected simply looking at the Ishvalans to be a trigger as well.

They take a break, after a couple of hours. Mahir and Scar go to the cafe across the street to pick up lunches for them. Riza wouldn’t normally leave her General alone in an unsecured location, but Major Miles is with him, and neither Celmira or Kaela strike her as a threat. Black spots are creeping into her vision, and she needs to take just a minute to catch her breath and restore her self-command. She won’t be able to contribute to the discussion if she spirals further.

There is a small porch just across the hallway from the community gathering room. Riza excuses herself and proceeds directly there. She leans against the stone wall, rough and warm from the sun, and wraps her arms around herself. Despite the warmth of the sun, despite the elbow-length sleeves of her blouse, she is cold. Her empty stomach heaves, and her chest hurts. She looks skyward, and wills herself to take a few deep breaths. 

_ Never again,  _ Riza tells herself.  _ Never again, never again, never again.  _ Never again will she take innocent lives.

“Captain?” 

Riza turns sharply at the voice. Kaela comes to join her on the porch, and offers her a cup of water. “Here. I thought that this might help.”

Riza blinks, taken aback by the unexpected gesture. She takes the water, and takes a sip. “Thank you.” Her hand shakes slightly, and both she and Kaela notice. Riza lowers the cup, ashamed. “Thank you. Really.”

“You’re welcome.” Kaela looks at her out of the corner of her eye. After several moments, she speaks up. “Celmira and Alim are sharp with everybody, even our own youths. Even with the younger community leaders, like Mahir and I.” 

“I understand why they’re reacting in the way they are to the General and I.” Riza rests her hands on the stone railing, looking out over the garden behind the temple. The space is bursting with vegetables growing ripe on their vines. Tomatoes, peppers, squash, eggplant, cucumbers, and green beans. 

Kaela plucks at the ends of her braid. “I don’t want you to leave here today thinking that everyone is going to hate you and General Mustang, and the rest of your Amestrian forces, and that you’re going to have a huge uphill battle with us,” she says frankly. “A lot will hate you. Many will never forgive. They hate that we would never be able to rebuild our homeland without the financial support and government support of the very people who drove us from our homeland. Who decimated our population.”

Riza bows her head. “Yes,” she whispers. “I understand that, too.” 

“But a lot of us have a more nuanced opinion. For a lot of different reasons.” Kaela withdraws a thin, battered leather wallet from the pocket of her long, persimmon-orange dress. She opens the wallet, pulls out a photograph, and shows it to Riza. The photograph is of Kaela, leaning against a brunette Amestrian woman. Her arm is wrapped around Kaela’s shoulders, and Kaela clutches a bouquet of marigolds to her chest. The couple is beaming with delight. 

“My wife,” Kaela says. “She’s Amestrian. You can probably tell.”

“Yes. Scar and Major Miles mentioned to the General and I that as the Ishvalan communities put down roots in Amestris, many Ishvalans married and had children with Amestrians.” Scar and Miles also mentioned that in most of those cases, the Amestrian spouses joined the Ishvalan communities, rather than the other way around. 

“There are more mixed-race couples in Moudarres, our community in East City, then here in Kassioun. But yes, that’s right.” Kaela stares out over the garden as well. “Eliane has a hearing impairment. She could have never served in the Amestrian military. But - knowing her, loving her - seeing how she is with me, and how she is with everyone here…” 

She trails off. “When my parents and sisters and I fled our homeland, we assumed that the Amestrians were doing what they did because they had hate in their hearts. Because they thought of us as undeserving of our own homeland, and of our own lives. I met Eliane, and I started to question that. I’m sure that many soldiers did have hate in their hearts, for how we looked different, and believed different things, from the rest of Amestris. But I think that just as many, if not more… were just carrying out their orders.”

Riza remains silent. What can she say to that? The fact that she and Roy had just been carrying out their orders doesn’t absolve them of guilt, or judgment.

“One of my sisters asked me if I was just saying that.” Kaela grimaces. “To rationalize the fact that I fell in love with an Amestrian woman. But I truly believe it. I believe that you all weren’t evil. I think that you and General Mustang just being here shows goodness.” 

“Thank you,” Riza manages to say. Her throat is tight with repressed tears. “For your grace.”

“It will take time for the rest of the community to have any trust in you. But my people are capable of acceptance and grace - of individuals, even if not the government, or the system.” Kaela offers her a small smile. “Eliane and I have a food stall four blocks directly east of here. Jasmine Kitchen. We’re open from six in the morning until ten at night. You’re welcome to visit us there and help us serve food, if you would like to get to know our people a little better before we all begin the relocation at the end of August.”

The offer (the invitation, into their safe space, their sanctuary) moves Riza too deeply for words. “I appreciate the offer.” Her voice breaks on the last word. “I’ll take you up on that.”

Before she can think better of it (question the sensitivity of it; of reaching out using the hands she has used to kill), Riza holds out her hand to Kaela. Kaela takes it, and gives it a firm squeeze. “Let’s go back in,” she says. “Mahir and Scar must be back from Aland’s. His cafe is nothing compared to our kitchen, of course, but his kibbeh is decent.” 

Riza follows her inside. 

-

The knot in her chest unclenches, just a little, through lunch and the remainder of the meeting.

-

At the end of the afternoon, they schedule another meeting with Celmira, Alim, Mahir, and Kaela, as well as a few community leaders that Alim and Celmira know from Moudarres, the East City Ishvalan enclave. “That went as well as could be expected,” Scar says, in a low voice, as the four of them step out of the temple.

“Thanks to you.” Roy looks him right in the eye. “Thank you for vouching for us in there. We wouldn’t have gotten as far as we did without your support.”

He holds his hand out to Scar, and Scar clasps it in his own. Riza watches them, and reflects on how much can change in a year. 

The four of them schedule a debrief meeting for the following day. Miles and Scar head across the street to Aland’s Cafe for some tea, and Roy and Riza return to their car. It’s late enough in the day that the narrow streets are coming alive with adults returning from work, and children returning from school. 

The sight of the children - children walking in groups with their friends, laughing and talking - pushes Riza’s already-strained composure to its limit. She saw so many dead children in Ishval. It is wonderful to see Ishvalan children alive, joyful, here. It fills her with hope to imagine the desolated, empty Ishvalan region filling up again, with people, with children. 

It doesn’t erase what was lost. It still gives her hope. 

She and Roy get into the car. Alone together, Roy lets some of his customary strength flag. He leans against the back of his seat and rubs his temples. Riza rests a hand on his arm. “You did well, sir.”

Roy takes her hand, before she can pull away. “Thank you. You did too. I saw you talking to Kaela when you went outside, and you seemed better when you returned.”

Riza tells him everything Kaela told her. Roy’s features soften, and he rubs his thumb over her knuckles. “That’s good,” he says. “From a mission perspective, it’ll only help things if you can build trust and a relationship with the community here before we all make the move in August. It’ll help you, too. Personally.”

Riza looks at him. She knows, from the expression on Roy’s face, that she doesn’t have to tell him of the conflict and pain she struggled with when facing Celmira, Alim, Mahir, and Kaela for the first time. 

Perhaps it isn’t the most prudent thing to do. Riza holds out her arms anyway, and Roy pulls her in for an embrace. They hold each other for several moments, wordlessly.

It is the last thing she wants, but Riza finally pulls back. She wipes her eyes, turns the car on, and shifts it into drive.

-

Between meetings with the Ishvalan leaders in Kassioun and Moudarres, frequent meetings with Scar and Major Miles, and work with the unit as they prepare for their move, the next weeks pass in a blur. 

It takes some time for Riza and Roy to figure out an acceptable schedule of how often to see one another after hours. Roy asserts that he would like to see her every night. As tempting a prospect as it is, Riza declines, citing the need to be discreet. They finally decide on one Friday or Saturday night per week, as well as one or two other weeknights. They decide that it is safest for Roy to leave in the very early hours of the morning, rather than staying the full night with her. 

This leaves them in a strange in-between territory of being able to indulge in one another to an extent, but never enough to sate their cravings. Riza works on her July and August magazine articles during her evenings away from Roy. She goes out to dinner with Rebecca, and gets to know Maria Ross and Denny Brosh better, over darts and pool at Brit’s Pub. She visits Gracia and Elicia, and Edward and Alphonse. It is a full life, and of course, Black Hayate is her constant companion. 

Riza still misses Roy, in the moments when she looks to the other side of the sofa, where Roy normally sits, only to find it empty. In the moments where she thinks of some observation or dry witticism; one that she would have shared with him, if he was with her. Riza still misses him when she wakes up alone in the morning, after falling asleep in Roy’s arms the previous night.

Roy confesses the same sentiments when they see one another again. When she opens the door to him, and he greets her with a hug and a bouquet of flowers. “You don’t have to bring me flowers every week,” Riza tells him. 

Roy shrugs, unrepentant. “Everyone knows it’s what you do for your girlfriend.” He embraces her again, then, and strokes her back as she nestles against him. “I missed you,” he breathes. Even though they work together all day as the General and his Captain, it isn’t the same as being able to interact with this kind of unrestrained love and affection. 

Riza kisses him on the cheek. “I missed you too.” 

These instants of sorrow are minute, compared to the joys that they discover. Riza marvels at every one, quietly treasuring them.

She has always cooked alone, barring the occasional meal prep session with Rebecca. Roy cooks shoulder-to-shoulder with her every evening that he doesn’t bring over takeout. It is a learning experience for him, as his previous culinary exploits have been limited to various types of sandwiches, and - on special occasions that merit celebration - heating up canned soup. 

Riza always enjoyed cooking, even alone, for the oddly meditative state it can bring. For the satisfaction of creating a meal. She enjoys it even more with Roy, as they intersperse conversation with her instructions on how to prepare the ingredients and work through the recipe. 

Riza learns that she loves it when Roy hugs her from behind as she stirs the contents of a pot or pan on the stove. She leans into him, and he kisses her on top of her head. She holds up a spoonful of the food to his lips every time, prompting him to try it and check whether it has enough salt or other seasonings. (This is more for Roy’s sake than her own. Riza knows that her food is always properly seasoned.)

They both learn that they’re a tactile couple. Roy practically melts, looking at her with a content, satisfied expression, whenever Riza strokes his back, or arms, or the nape of his neck. He likes holding hands, and sitting close by her side. He likes forehead kisses, and when she smooths her fingers through his hair. She understands that affinity for touch very well, and she is unrestrained with touch, both out of bed and in it. 

Roy learns that there is nothing Riza loves more than hugs and kisses, pressed to her lips, forehead, cheeks, and nose, and he gives them to her in abundance. She never has to ask. 

Allowing Roy to know the depths of how much she loves and craves touch and affectionate words makes Riza feel raw, tender, and vulnerable. Both in bed, and out of it. (She has been on her own, been guarded, keeping that part of her repressed, out of sight, out of mind, for so long.) But Roy responds with infinite love and care, with compassion, and without judgment. 

Interspersed with the typical address of  _ Riza  _ and  _ Hawkeye,  _ he calls her  _ sweetheart, my heart, my Riza. _ It makes something inside her bloom, like a sunflower turning toward the sun. It takes a little practice for Riza to make the transition of calling Roy by his first name out loud, and not just in the privacy of her thoughts.

One night, when they are lying in one another’s arms and exchanging kisses, Riza strokes her thumbs across Roy’s cheekbones. She’s caught up in the moment when she whispers, “My love.” Her instinct is embarrassment, but Roy smiles at her with such unguarded sweetness that she takes to calling him that sometimes.

Their situation is unconventional. It is not one that she could, in good conscience, recommend to any other woman, or soldier. Riza loves it, anyway. 

-

Too soon, it is the beginning of August, and the unit, Major Armstrong, Maria Ross and Denny Brosh, Sheska, Rebecca, Izumi and Sig Curtis, Zampano, Gerso, Darius, Heinkel, and Gracia are gathered at Zelo’s for Edward and Alphonse’s official retirement and return-home party. Roy rents out the entire restaurant for the occasion and files it as a work-related expense, which Riza allows. Riza and Breda (the unit’s official party planning committee) spend a few hours decorating the place. They have help from Gracia and Elicia, who drop off a great number of balloons, and brightly colored paper chains hand-made by Elicia and her friends. 

It is a joyful occasion. Riza knows that. There is a lump in her throat as she and Breda hang streamers and the paper chains nevertheless. The faint sense of sorrow persists in the back of her mind throughout the night, even as they eat all of Edward and Alphonse’s favorite foods, play darts and pool, and chat with the Elric brothers about their future plans. 

“I’m surprised the therapists are even letting you out of the hospital and back to Resembool so soon, kid.” Havoc cuts Alphonse another piece of cake. (This is one of Alphonse’s favorite foods. Riza has witnessed Edward and Alphonse arguing for a full half hour about cake versus pie.) “I was in therapy for longer than you after my injury, and that was nothing compared to, you know, losing and regaining my entire body.”

Edward surfaces from the milkshake he is chugging down, and snorts. “They would have kept Al here for a whole year if they could. I like them and all, but they’re a little intense.”

“They let me go under one condition.” Alphonse digs into his cake with glee. “Every two weeks, a couple of physical and occupational therapy interns are going to come to Resembool and work with me until I’m really back to one-hundred percent. I have a book of daily exercises to work on with Brother and Winry too. And they gave me a big suitcase full of therapy equipment to take home with me.”

“They probably did all that just so that they could get this one out from underfoot.” Izumi ruffles Edward’s hair and ignores his indignant squawk. “I don’t know how they put up with his daily pestering about when he could take you home.” 

“I don’t  _ pester _ ,” Edward mutters, pouting. “I am an  _ advocate _ for Al and me.” 

“You are such a pest that if not for my good genes, my hair would have gone gray from the stress of dealing with your nonsense a long time ago,” Roy informs him. 

“Tell me about it!” Izumi crows. 

Edward turns bright red. “Hey! Captain Hawkeye got me and Al out of more scrapes than you did, Mustang, and her hair is just fine!”

“I dye it,” Riza replies, straight-faced. The whole table bursts out laughing at the momentarily panicked look on Edward and Alphonse’s faces.

They stay out until past midnight, until Riza reminds everyone that Edward and Alphonse have a train to catch in less than eight hours. She offers to give them a ride from their hotel to the train station, where they are meeting Izumi and Sig, and the brothers accept gratefully. 

There was a time, some years ago, when they would have insisted that they could just take a taxi, and that they didn’t want to inconvenience her. Over the years, they have come to allow others to take care of them; to openly love and support them.

Riza wakes at five-thirty in the morning to walk Black Hayate and get ready for the day. She treats herself to a spiced vanilla black tea latte from the cafe she stops at on the way to the hotel. Edward and Alphonse are waiting outside, suitcases in hand. Despite their late night, they look sharp, in outfits they bought during their shopping trip with her and Roy earlier in the summer.

It’s a short drive to the train station. Riza enjoys Edward and Alphonse’s chatter from the backseat. Despite her own bias towards dogs, she fairly hears out Alphonse’s surprisingly well-developed case for why Roy should adopt a cat rather than a dog. (One of the points is that the General is too lazy to walk a dog twice a day, play with it, and train it.) As she drives, she tries not to think back to every other time she has dropped these two off at the train station over the years, giving them travel tips for whatever town in Amestris they’re headed to. 

Riza parks at the entrance to the station. It isn’t too crowded at this hour on a Saturday morning, and Edward checks his new wristwatch. It is just as fancy as Roy’s, and it had been the going-away gift given by the unit. One for Edward, and a matching one for Alphonse.  _ That thing you wear now is falling apart, and Alphonse doesn’t have a watch at all,  _ Roy commented. Fuery excitedly explained that he rigged the watches with a two-way communication system allowing Edward and Alphonse to speak to one another at a range of up to one-hundred meters.

“We have fifteen minutes,” Edward says, as they get out of the car, hauling their luggage with them. “We could go check if there’s anywhere open to get something to eat.”

“That’s not necessary.” Riza withdraws the two brown paper bags from the floor of the passenger seat. She hands one to Edward, and one to Alphonse. “There are bagel sandwiches and fruit for your breakfast, and cold lobster rolls for lunch.”

Edward smiles, reminiscing. “I don’t know if you remember, but you got us lobster rolls before sending us off to Meox on our first day.”

“I do.” Riza pats Alphonse on the shoulder. She hadn’t realized, then, that Alphonse couldn’t eat. He will be able to enjoy the meal this time, and he beams at her.

“Thank you for everything, Captain Hawkeye,” Alphonse says. “You’ve always looked out for us.”

“It’s been a pleasure.” Riza takes a deep breath. “Stay in touch, all right?”

“We will.” Edward steps forward first, hugging her tight. He is joined a moment later by Alphonse. Riza wraps her arms around both of them, and wills herself to remain strong and calm. 

When she steps back, she attempts a small smile. “Have a safe journey.”

“We’ll call or write and let you know we made it.” Edward re-shoulders his bag, and he regards her with such understanding. “Take care, Captain Hawkeye.”

Riza waves to them, and watches them go, until they disappear through the gates of the station. 

When they are safely out of sight, she returns to the car, and turns it on. She looks at the clock. 

Riza allows herself three minutes to cry quietly. When those three minutes have passed, she wipes her tears with the thin cardigan she keeps folded, resting on the passenger seat. She wraps her arms around herself, trying to regain her sense of equilibrium. 

She just sits, for a little while. Slightly empty, bereft, at a loss for what to do next. She could go home and collect Black Hayate, and meet with any of her friends, or Grumman, or Roy. 

Riza starts the car. Instead of driving home, she heads to Kassioun. It is her first time making the trip here alone, without Roy, Major Miles, or Scar. Still, she has long since memorized the route. 

Riza drives directly to Kaela and Eliane’s food stall. She parks the car in the narrow alley behind the stall. The Jasmine Kitchen stands out, by virtue of its vividly painted green sign. This early on a Saturday morning, the streets of Kassioun are quiet. Still, Kaela and Eliane are busy at work in the open kitchen, preparing for the arrival of the breakfast crowd. 

Eliane looks up from the eggplants she is meticulously stuffing with some sort of thick paste, and notices her first. She waves, and then nudges Kaela. Kaela stops grinding the paste with her mortar and pestle, and raises a hand in greeting. “Riza,” she says. She is the only one of the Ishvalan community leaders who has taken Riza up on the encouragement to refer to her by her first name, instead of her military rank. 

(She has felt awkward whenever Scar, Miles, or Roy refer to her by rank in the meetings with the Ishvalan community leaders. It reminds her of being double-promoted fresh out of the Academy for her  _ accomplishments  _ in Ishval. She participated in a state-sanctioned genocide; she  _ excelled  _ in a state-sanctioned genocide; and in return, she received a higher salary and better benefits for it.) 

“Good morning, Kaela, Eliane.” Riza stops in front of the counter, a little self-conscious. 

Kaela picks up on her hesitance. “Are you here for breakfast, or to help out with the breakfast rush?”

Riza stands up a little straighter. “I’d like to help.”

“Good,” Eliane sighs, relieved. “We’re behind on the pita and the ful medames this morning.” 

Kaela finds an extra apron for her, and Riza spends the next hour preparing pita bread, ful medames (a stew of fava beans), fresh tomato sauce for shakshouka, and dolma, alongside Kaela and Eliane. She has never made any of these dishes before. Learning from Kaela and Eliane, and listening to their descriptions of other traditional Ishvalan dishes, is fascinating.

Customers begin to filter in after an hour or so. Riza tries to remain focused on her work, kneading large batches of dough for pita bread. Still, she is uncomfortably aware of how some potential customers see her, stop in their paths, and turn right around and walk in the opposite direction. Some of their faces go blank and expressionless before they leave. Other faces shutter with anger. Riza’s back grows damp with sweat underneath her blouse, and she is choked with shame and sorrow. 

“I don’t want to hurt your business, or to upset people who are just going about their morning,” Riza says, in an undertone, to Kaela. “Is there somewhere in the back where I can prep food without being seen?”

“Yes, but the whole point is that people see you.” Kaela chops a handful of mint leaves, depositing them into a pitcher of green tea. “Stay out here.”

Riza does. After some time, a man clutching a newspaper comes by, and takes a seat at the counter. He greets Eliane and Kaela in Ishvalan, and gestures to Riza. His expression is curious, not hostile. Riza nods politely, her heart pounding in her chest. 

Kaela explains something in Ishvalan. The man gives her a long, measured look. Then he nods back, reciprocating Riza’s greeting.

More people stop in at the stall. Some ignore Riza, ordering their food from Kaela and Eliane and walking off. Some sit at the counter or at the tables in front of the stall. Of the ones who sit, most seem to ask Kaela and Eliane about her. The women repeat their explanations. Riza tries to make herself inconspicuous in the kitchen, but she sees some nods of understanding, and some frowns and scowls. A couple of people raise a hand in greeting to her. One middle-aged woman pats Eliane’s shoulder, and then looks at Riza and offers a tentative smile.

Riza works straight through the breakfast and lunch rush. There is a temporary lull in activity around fourteen-hundred hours, and she, Kaela, and Eliane take a break to eat large plates of food and drink chilled mint green tea. 

“I hope that this hasn’t been too disruptive for you.” Riza finishes her tea. “In having me underfoot in your kitchen, as well as - everything else.” She fumbles with her words a little, uncharacteristically. “I understand if it’s best that I not return.” 

Eliane shakes her head. “It was nice to have the extra help. You’re a fast learner.”

“It was a good thing for you to be here.” Kaela mops up the last of the hummus on her plate with a chunk of pita. “I think it will affect the way that people are talking and thinking about things. Would you like to come back?”

“Yes,” Riza replies, without hesitation. “Does tomorrow work for you both?”

-

Riza falls into the routine of visiting Kassioun for a few hours on Saturdays and Sundays, and at least once during the week. It is tiring work, performed entirely on her feet. She prepares food in the kitchen, and eventually, begins serving dishes and drinks to customers who are open to it. But she is grateful for it. 

She begins to recognize people by face, especially the regulars at the stall. Kaela and Eliane fill her in on their names and a little bit of their stories, later, once they leave. She learns that Sakeen Attar cares for the stray cats and dogs in the neighborhood; that Sidqui Javed was an economics professor at Tishreen University; that Izadeen Kazdi is a teacher at the local primary school. She learns that Amal Yamin is the community librarian, and Zubaida Taha is the community physician, and Saheeda Farag owns the general store. 

Riza picks up a few words of Ishvalan. A few people eventually start to acknowledge her, too, with nods, or short words of greeting or thanks. 

Major Miles comments that her work in Kassioun is a good thing for their mission. “Anything that can be done to rebuild trust and rehabilitate the way people think of Amestrian soldiers is a step in the right direction,” he says. (Riza’s unit looks a little uncomfortable at this. They have only ever known her as their dedicated, dutiful First Lieutenant and Captain, and as their friend. They know the facts of the Ishvalan massacre. Riza still thinks that they struggle, a little, with the knowledge that she and Roy carried it out.) 

The exposure helps her, as well, more than she can explain to anybody except Roy. Riza tells him about her visits to Kassioun after each one, as they curl up on the sofa together. Sometimes Roy massages her aching feet, and sometimes she rests with her head in his lap, as he cards his fingers through her hair. 

“Has it helped?” he asks tonight, as he draws her close. “With the nightmares?”

Riza nestles against his shoulder. “It has, a little.”

“What about your comfort with the people?”

“It’s growing by the day,” Riza replies honestly. “The discomfort I feel is more about how my presence affects them, than about how looking at them makes me hurt.” 

Roy mulls it over. “It’s exposure therapy, of a sort. You’re facing what used to trigger you head-on, and you’re finding that it doesn’t have the same effect on you that it did when we first went to Kassioun.”

Riza studies him, surprised by the observation. “What?” Roy sniffs. “I can be perceptive.”

“I know you can. I’ve just never heard you use those terms before.”

Roy reaches out, petting Black Hayate, who is curled up on his other side. He is quiet for some time. “I might have picked them up from Dr. Carnahan.”

It takes a second for the name to register in her tired mind. “Stanley Carnahan? The psychiatrist from Central Medical School?” Riza recognizes the name as one of the four psychiatrists that Dr. Knox and Roy recruited to join them in Ishval.

“That’s the one.” Roy clears his throat. “I’ve been seeing him since early in the summer. I know Knox vouched for him, but I wanted to be sure that he wasn’t some kind of hack. We’re entrusting people to Carnahan’s care, and the others as well. They have to be top quality. I thought I could verify his capabilities myself.”

“I see.” Riza takes his hand. “What did you think?”

Roy shrugs, a little ruefully. “Well, I kept going back every week. It’s been helpful. If I can trust Carnahan for myself, then I can trust him to care for others.”

“Of course.” 

Roy picks up on her scrutiny. “What is it?”

“What changed?” Riza asks. “When Hughes suggested that you see someone, years ago, you refused.”

“It helps that Carnahan is a civilian, and not a military psychiatrist. This won’t go in my medical records, and damage my chances of further career advancement.” Roy sighs. “Besides, I knew I needed it, now more than ever. I have you, and the unit, and Major Miles and Scar, even. But ultimately, the success of this reconstruction project rests on my shoulders. In order to do right by the Ishvalans, and everybody involved, I have to be the best man I can be. The best version of myself. I committed to do whatever I could to make that happen.”

Riza leans in, and kisses him on the cheek. “I’m proud of you, Roy.” 

“And I am, of you. I know that none of this has been easy.” Roy tucks a stray lock of hair behind her ear. 

“It won’t be, for a long time,” Riza acknowledges steadily. “But we’ll get through it.”

“Yes.” Roy presses a kiss to her brow. “We will.”

* * *

_to be continued_

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you so much to everybody who left comments and kudos on the previous chapter. I love reading your thoughts.
> 
> Notes for this chapter--
> 
> I loved every moment of writing Roy and Riza getting to be a couple. I loved their shopping trip with Ed and Al. I enjoyed covering a lot of ground in this chapter, from Roy and Riza's talk about Roy's relationship history, to addressing Grumman's response to the anti-fraternization laws and Roy and Riza's situation. 
> 
> Riza's goodbye to Ed and Al low key broke my heart. I was proud of Roy, too, for getting the help he needs by seeing a mental health professional. 
> 
> Important notes for this chapter--
> 
> It has always been my goal to handle the devastating topic of the Ishvalan genocide with respect, sensitivity, and empathy for the Ishvalans. I hope that the subject material of this chapter was not offensive. That was not my intention. 
> 
> I hope, also, that Kaela's reaching out to Riza was not unrealistic. I think that Kaela made a very valid point in her initial conversation with Riza. That many of the Ishvalan survivors will never forgive Riza and Roy, and the rest of the Amestrian military, for what they did. That many of the Ishvalan survivors will hate them for what they did. And that is valid. That is a valid, understandable response. Riza knows that, and so does Roy. Neither Roy or Riza expect forgiveness, acceptance, trust, or respect, especially automatically, after everything that they did.
> 
> It is interesting for me, as the writer of this story, and I'm sure for the readers of this story, because we've loved and followed Riza for so long, but from some points of view, our beloved Riza is justifiably hated, feared, and distrusted. 
> 
> I think that Kaela's choice to reach out to Riza and treat her with such kindness and grace was in part motivated by Kaela's own life experience, in falling in love with and marrying an Amestrian. I wanted to highlight the idea that the population of Ishvalan survivors across the various Ishvalan communities in Amestris is diverse in their attitudes toward Amestrians, toward the Amestrian military, and toward Riza and Roy and Major Miles specifically. 
> 
> I look forward to continuing to explore this in the following chapter, which will cover the years of the Ishvalan reconstruction effort.
> 
> I am not sure about the chapter count, by the way. I have the main plot beats figured out for the rest of the story, but the chapters always end up being longer/more detailed than I expected. The 23 chapter estimation might become 24, but I don't think I'll know that until I'm done with the next chapter. 
> 
> Thank you for reading, and I hope that you enjoyed it! I would absolutely love to hear what you thought. Any comments will be treasured. I am also on tumblr @lantur if you would like to connect. :)


	22. twenty

“How much more do we have space for on the cart?” Kaela calls from the kitchen. 

Riza does a quick check. “Twelve boxes, I think.”

“Got it.” Eliane and Kaela load up the cart with another twelve to-go boxes. Kaela sighs, wiping sweat from her brow. “All right, Ellie. We’ll be back in thirty to pick up another batch.”

Eliane gives them a thumbs up. “Sounds good. I’ll get some kebabs ready for us too, so we can have a quick snack break.”

Riza’s stomach growls at the mere mention of Eliane’s lamb kebabs. “Ready to go?” Kaela asks. 

Black Hayate gives a small bark of assent, and Kaela grins at the dog. Kaela and Eliane have dubbed him the unofficial mascot of the food stall. Eliane marveled at how well-behaved he was, after the first time Riza brought him over to sit at the front of the stall. “He never steals food.” She regarded Black Hayate with some awe. “My old dog couldn’t be left alone with human food for more than a minute.” __

Meanwhile, Kaela was pleased that the children of Kassioun were unable to resist Black Hayate. The kids often bought juice, candy, or other treats from the food stall after coming to visit the dog. “He’s good for business,” she decreed. 

Riza had laughed, scratching Black Hayate behind the ears. “He’s going to get a big head.”

Riza, Kaela, and Black Hayate set out on their route, Riza pushing the food cart in front of her. They don’t make it far before they are waylaid by a small group of teenagers. Ajmal, Faheen, Sabah, and Najwa are inseparable. Riza never sees any of them without the others. She and Kaela wave hello, and they wave back. “Hey, Kaela,” Najwa says. “Hey, Miss Riza.” 

Kaela raises an eyebrow at the football tucked underneath Ajmal’s arm. “Shouldn’t you be helping your families with packing?”

“We need a break,” Faheen groans. “It’s all we’ve been doing for weeks.”

“And we are helping, anyway,” Sabah points out, crouching down to pet Black Hayate. “My parents sent me to ask Miss Riza if we could have more boxes. Hi there, puppy.”

The other three echo the request. Riza withdraws her journal from her satchel, slung over her shoulder, and makes a note of it. “Got it. I’ll bring some either today or tomorrow. Do you or your families need anything else?”

Ajmal sidles closer to the food cart. “Well, we could use some dolmades for a post-game snack.”

“Get out of here,” Kaela scolds, but there’s no real heat to the words. The teens run off, already trading trash talk in advance of their football match, unfazed by the high August temperature. 

“Do you think that one hundred more boxes will be enough?” Riza asks. 

Kaela nods. “We may not even need that much. Most people have most of their things already packed up.”

“One week,” Riza muses. It still doesn’t seem real. Scar, Major Miles, Major Armstrong - recently promoted to Lieutenant Colonel Armstrong - Maria Ross, Denny Brosh, Dr. Knox and his family, General Hall and his wife, Falman and Anna, and Breda have been in Ishval for three weeks already. Their group has made significant headway in establishing a camp in Ras Al-Ayn. They were accompanied by a large contingent of Ishvalan volunteers interested in planting crops, getting their livestock settled, and helping with the initial establishment of the camp.

Scar and the others radio in daily with reports to the Ishvalan community leaders in Kassioun and Moudarres, and to Roy. Everything seems to be going well. The group has already planted wheat, barley, chickpeas, and lentils. With those staples taken care of, they’re moving on to planting citrus, apricot, olive, fig, date, and almond trees over the coming week. 

“One week,” Kaela echoes. She beams. “I know it’s going to be a difficult adjustment. I know we’re going to start from scratch, compared to what we’ve built up here over the past years. But Eliane and I are so excited. I’ve told her so much about my homeland.”

“Good.” Riza tries to smile. She is a little amazed that Kaela doesn’t seem to have any fear or apprehension about returning to a place she witnessed being literally torn apart; ravaged by Amestrian bombs, soldiers, snipers, and State Alchemists. That resilience, that focus on the future, and not the past, is something she admires. “I’m glad that you’re looking forward to it.”

They resume their food delivery, going from house to house, apartment to apartment, dropping boxes of food off for the residents of Kassioun. Proprietors of the community’s two other cafes and food stalls have been providing the same service. This allows the community members time to focus on packing and other last-minute work for the move, rather than on preparing food for themselves and their families. It also gives Kaela and Riza a chance to check in on everyone’s progress and readiness for moving day next week, and answer questions.

“Would you please remind me of the schedule for moving day?” Sidqui Javed asks, when they drop off food for him and his wife, Vardah. “I wrote it down in one of my journals. I can’t seem to find it, though. I must have packed it already.”

“The trucks will arrive at six in the morning on the twenty-third,” Riza says. Vardah notes that down on the sheet of paper stuck to the front of their small, battered refrigerator. The military convoy, manned by Havoc, Rebecca, Charlie, and Charlie’s subordinates, will transport everybody’s possessions to Ishval. “We have a group of ten, as well as the General, Fuery, and myself, who will help everyone load their things into the trucks. At nine, we’ll have another group of military drivers take everyone to Central Station. Our trains leave at eleven. We’ll stop at East City to pick up the group from Moudarres, and continue on to Resembool by train. We’ve arranged for transport to meet us there and take us the rest of the way to Ishval by road. Do you have any questions?”

Sidqui and Vardah exchange a glance. “You, General Mustang, and Lieutenant Fuery will be with us the whole time?”

Riza understands their reluctance to entrust themselves to strangers, Amestrian soldiers they don’t know, during the trip from Kassioun to Central Station. It is a comfort that they trust her and Roy and Fuery to look out for them. “Yes,” she assures. “The three of us are splitting up, so that we can spread out amongst the transport trucks taking everyone to Central Station. We’ll also be traveling in a convoy, so we’ll be able to notice and respond immediately if anything doesn’t look right.” 

“Good.” A little of the apprehension eases from Sidqui’s features. “Thank you.”

Riza and Kaela head to the neighbor’s house. They find Hadia taking a break from packing to read with her young son, Rahat. “How are things going?” Kaela asks, greeting Hadia with a hug. She and Hadia grew up together in Ishval, in the city of Ugarit. Their parents met at a prenatal class for expectant parents held at the community health clinic. Rahat hugs Kaela around the legs, and then makes a beeline to Black Hayate. He giggles in delight when the dog nuzzles against his hand, and Riza smiles. 

“Good. I can barely sleep, I’m so excited. I keep waking up at five in the morning, ready to go.” Hadia watches Rahat petting Black Hayate. “He’s barely getting any sleep either, but for the opposite reason.”

Now that Hadia mentions it, Riza notices that Rahat does look tired. “Is he nervous about leaving?” Rahat is four. Like all the Ishvalan children in Kassioun, this is the only home he has ever known.  _ It’s hard for the little kids,  _ Kaela told her, once.  _ All of us, and even the teens, too - we remember our homeland. We want to go back. But to the little kids,  _ this  _ is their home. They’ve heard stories of Ishval from their parents, but it’s not the same, you know? It’s just stories to them.  _

Hadia ruffles Rahat’s hair. “Can you tell Miss Riza why you’re nervous?”

Rahat looks up at Riza, and his small brows draw together in a frown. “I don’t want to go on the train.”

This is a little bit of a surprise. Almost all of the small children Riza has spoken with over the past weeks have expressed excitement about the train ride. (From what she’s gathered, it is the only aspect of the trip that does excite them). Most of them have never been on a train before. 

“He doesn’t like the whistle that trains make.” Hadia rests her hands on Rahat’s shoulders. “And he gets anxious about not knowing when the next whistle is coming.”

“Hmm.” Riza bends down to look Rahat in the eye, and considers what could be helpful to him. Earplugs would be an option, but not the most comfortable one, for a four-year-old. She notices the small, old radio and cassette tape player sitting on the kitchen table. An idea occurs to her. “Rahat, do you like music, or shows on the radio?”

Rahat nods. “I like music. I like Abby Hatcher and Rescue Riders too.”

Riza opens her satchel. She withdraws the pair of headphones that plug into her small communication radio, also tucked into the satchel. “These plug into the radio over there. You can put this part over your ears. Then you won’t hear the train whistles as loudly anymore.”

Rahat immediately puts the headphones over his ears. He tilts his head back and forth experimentally, growing accustomed to the sensation of the thick, padded ear coverings. “It’s too much,” Hadia protests. “It’s expensive military equipment, isn’t it?” 

“It’s fine.” Riza straightens. “We have dozens more back in our office.” 

Hadia smiles at her. “Rahat, can you say thank you to Miss Riza?”

“Thank you, Miss Riza!” 

“Really, thank you,” Hadia echoes, as Rahat goes off to show his auntie Kaela the latest additions to his rock collection. “It’ll make the journey much easier for him.”

“I’m happy to help.” Riza unloads two boxes of food and places them on Hadia’s kitchen table. “Elicia will be there too, so he’ll have someone to talk to and play with.” Gracia and Elicia have come to Kassioun a few times, to get to know their future neighbors. Gracia has been connecting with the other teachers in the community to begin their planning around education in Ras Al-Ayn for the children, teenagers, and college-aged young adults. Roy commented to Riza, the last time they had run into Gracia in Kassioun, that he hadn’t seen her look so animated in a long time. 

It is late by the time Riza and Black Hayate return to their apartment. Grumman had sent a packing service over, as promised. All of her possessions, save for the essentials she needs over the following week, are gathered into neat stacks of boxes in the living room. This is her second move in as many years. 

Riza is so tired that she barely manages to brush her teeth and shower before falling into bed. Black Hayate hops up beside her, curling up at her side. Riza rests a hand on his flank, grounding herself in the soft rise and fall of his body with his breaths. 

Hadia, Kaela, Eliane, and the rest of her unit, even Roy, have all mentioned struggling to sleep through the night due to excitement and anticipation about the move. Riza has struggled for different reasons.

She closes her eyes. She thinks of the happiness and excitement of the Ishvalan community, and the sense of hope and promise they feel at making their homeland their own once again. Riza thinks of Roy, too. His excitement, energy, and sense of purpose are palpable, every time she sees him. He and the Ishvalans are looking forward, not back. They aren’t allowing themselves to be crippled by fear, or the trauma and memories of the past. She needs to do the same. She can learn from them. 

Tentatively, slowly, with the caution of someone unraveling a bandage to check if the wound underneath is healing, Riza thinks of Ishval. 

The wound has not healed. It is as raw, weeping, and bloody as it was ten years ago. Riza forces herself to replace the Ishval of her memories (the ground torn up and soaked with blood and debris, buildings aflame or reduced to rubble, corpses lying on the street where they fell) with something different. 

She imagines intact buildings - homes, temples, schools, businesses. Open-air markets bustling with people. University students strolling through their campuses, coffee in hand. Teenagers learning how to drive motorized scooters. Children at play in alleyways and parks. The Ishvalan call to prayer echoing in the air in the early morning and in the evening. 

Riza holds those images close, as she falls asleep. 

-

There is no time for moments of quiet reflection like that over the coming week. Too soon, it is the evening before they leave, and Riza is hugging her grandfather goodbye after a dinner at the presidential mansion. Grumman’s eyes are suspiciously shiny as he draws back. “Take care of yourself, Riza.” He lowers his voice. “If it all gets to be too much, you’re always welcome to come visit me in Central and stay for a while.” 

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Riza rests a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll write, and I’ll call. And you’ll be so busy with your duties that you won’t even have time to miss me.”

“I doubt that. But yes, stay in touch.” Grumman clears his throat. “Mustang, please look out for my granddaughter.”

“Always,” Roy vows. 

-

Moving Day, as the unit has referred to it for the past months, begins at four-hundred hours on August twenty-third, 1915. Riza doesn’t have a moment to catch her breath, or even stop thinking for a minute, for the next seven hours. Not until the train pulls away from Central Station at eleven-hundred hours with a piercing whistle. (She thinks of Rahat, and hopes that he has his headphones on.) 

“Our journey begins.” Roy looks out over their packed compartment. Children and toddlers wave goodbye to Central, their small hands guided by their parents. A few older women wipe at the corner of their eyes with their scarves, overwhelmed. Several men cheer out loud, hugging one another around the shoulders. Roy smiles slightly at the sight, and then turns to her. “Are you all right, Captain?”

“I’m fine, sir.” It isn’t a lie. Riza is too preoccupied with the thousands of details ahead to dwell on any of her emotions that simmer beneath the surface. (She does not allow herself to remember, for more than one, fleeting moment, the last time she embarked on the journey to Ishval. She was a cadet seated in a military transport vehicle, her pack at her feet, cradling her brand-new sniper rifle on her lap.) 

Riza suppresses the memory. “I keep thinking that I’ve forgotten a group of civilians back at the station, or in Kassioun. Or that I’ve forgotten Black Hayate at the station.”

Black Hayate’s ears perk up. “All the civilians are accounted for, as are the Second Lieutenant and myself,” Roy replies. “You have everything you need, Captain Hawkeye.”

There are notes of sweetness and teasing underneath the apparently matter-of-fact reply. Fuery, sitting across from them, looks as though he very much wishes he was anywhere else on earth rather than here. Riza feigns a cough to hide her amusement, and pulls out her radio. “I’m going to let the rest of the team in Ishval know that we’re on our way now.”

-

Their stop in East City goes smoothly. Roy, Riza, Fuery, and the Ishvalan community leaders coordinate the boarding of another several hundred passengers from Moudarres. “This entire train is packed to capacity,” Riza observes, when she and Black Hayate rejoin Roy and Fuery in their compartment. “We’re up to standing room only in several compartments. It’s good that our advance team took so many people with them when they went. Otherwise we would be that full in every compartment.”

“I’m glad, too.” Roy nods to the psychiatrists. Spaziani, Barrick, Jeffries, and Carnahan are crammed into one compartment, along with Jeffries’ wife Avery, also a psychiatrist. They chatter with Zubaida Taha and Ayman Ghassan, the community physicians from Kassioun and Moudarres, respectively. “Carnahan said that it could help with adjustment, too. The Ishvalans who are just arriving now can ask the advance group how they coped and adjusted to things.”

“That’s a good point. It’s given the Ishvalan advance group time to get familiar with our team, too.”

Roy notices the bright blue dolphin sticker that had been placed on the collar of Riza’s uniform coat, and his lips twitch. “I see you ran into Gracia and Elicia.”

“I did.” Riza keeps a straight face. “Elicia has a clownfish sticker she wants to give you. And Fuery, Elicia has a shark sticker for you.”

Fuery pales at the mention of sharks. “A clownfish? Why a clownfish?” Roy protests. He draws himself up to his full height, straightening his own uniform coat. “I’m a Brigadier General. Surely I deserve a better sticker than that.  _ I  _ should be the shark.”

“I’ll trade with you, sir,” Fuery tells him earnestly. “I’d rather be a clownfish.” 

“I believe Elicia’s words were,  _ Uncle Roy gets a clownfish, because he’s so funny. _ Then she almost fell over laughing at her own joke.” 

Roy grins, and the corners of his eyes crinkle. “She got Hughes’ sense of humor, that’s for sure.” 

“Miss Riza!” Riza turns to see Sabah, Najwa, Ajmal, and Faheen, the group of teenagers from Kassioun, waving her over from another corner of the compartment. Riza goes to join them, and is immediately asked to weigh in on a debate about whether cycling or weightlifting is a better cross-training activity for runners.

-

It is late evening by the time they arrive in Resembool. The area in front of the train station is packed with enormous military transport vehicles. Dozens of the Resembool locals have gathered to stare at the spectacle. Major Miles, Breda, Falman, Lieutenant Colonel Armstrong, Maria, Brosh, General Hall, Dr. Knox, Hazel Knox, and Ezra Knox all have their own vehicles. Pinako and Winry have gathered over a dozen volunteers from Resembool to help with transport as well, with their own, smaller, trucks and vehicles. Pinako, Edward, Winry, and Alphonse are standing with Breda, Falman, Armstrong, Maria, and Brosh. The three teenagers look happy and healthy. Alphonse is using a cane, rather than two crutches, now. The muscles in his arms and shoulders have visibly filled out. 

Riza, Fuery, and Roy greet the Elrics, Winry, Pinako, and the rest of their team, as the civilians and soldiers alike take a break to stretch their limbs and walk around after a several-hour long journey. They still have four hours on the road, crammed tightly into the transport vehicles, ahead of them. “Are you going to help us drive, Edward?” Fuery teases.

Roy scoffs. “I wouldn’t let Fullmetal drive, even if he could. We want the Ishvalans to get to their homeland in one piece, after all.”

“Hey!” Edward points a finger in Roy’s face. “I can drive! Better than you, I bet! Winry taught me, and I’m great at it!”

Riza looks at Winry for confirmation. She shakes her head  _ no.  _ Alphonse giggles. 

She and Roy, and Black Hayate, take the transport with Breda. They catch up over the course of the long drive. “How’s construction coming?” Roy asks.

It’s a little hard to hear Breda over the sound of conversation from the passenger area of the vehicle. Each of these transport vehicles can accommodate sixty adults. “It’s going well,” Breda reports. “Installing the water and sewer lines is coming along more quickly than we thought. It helps that the company sent us a dozen of its alchemists, as well as a dozen of us regular people.” 

They pass the four hours on the road in discussion and quiet thought. It grows late, approaching midnight. Riza stifles the temptation to rest her head on Roy’s shoulder and sleep. His presence at her side is a comfort. (She had put him in the middle seat, in between her and Breda, for security. Black Hayate sits by the window, peering out.)

Ras Al-Ayn is visible as a glow in the darkness, in the distance. Riza raises her eyebrows. They don’t have their power lines completely operational yet. The small settlement is powered by several generators at the moment. How many campfires are blazing, to create a glow visible from this distance?

As soon as the thought occurs to her, an array of fireworks, glittering bright blue and purple and pink, lights up the sky over the settlement. There are gasps from the passenger area behind them and exclamations of delight, in Ishvalan and Amestrian. A few children cry out in amazement. The fireworks continue as the long convoy approaches, in a brilliant display that far overshadows the stars. Riza and Roy stare, lost for words. Breda grins, unsurprised by the sight. 

“That is  _ so awesome _ ,” Faheen gushes to his friends. “Way better than New Year’s fireworks in Central.”

“I wonder if they’ll have any left to set off by the time we get there?” Sabah asks longingly. 

“The advance group wanted to have a proper welcome home for all of you who were joining them today.” Breda glances the passengers in the rearview mirror. “I know it’s late, but I hope you guys are hungry. The feast prep started yesterday.”

They finally come to a stop, followed by all of the other transport vehicles. Huge crowds of the advance group wait, eager to reunite with their friends and family arriving with the second group. As soon as Riza hops down from the vehicle, she breathes in, struck by the scents she recognizes after months of helping at Kaela and Eliane’s food stall. An array of warm spices, freshly baked pita bread, and fire-roasted meat, vegetables, and lentils. Someone is playing traditional Ishvalan music elsewhere in the camp. The sound is almost completely drowned out by cries of welcome and greetings, as the first group of Ishvalans greets the second.

She and Roy and Breda help their passengers disembark. Kaela and Eliane run straight for Kaela’s parents, who arrived with the first group, hugging them tight. Gracia and Hadia climb down, their children in their arms, and Elicia and Rahat both clamor to be let down. They hold hands when they’re on the ground, pointing up at the sky. Sabah, Najwa, Ajmal, and Faheen leap out of the vehicle and dash toward one of the campfires, where an older man is already handing out kebabs to the new arrivals. 

Riza absorbs the sight, stunned. She hasn’t seen the entire Ishvalan community, from Kassioun and Moudarres, in one place before. Some of the older people cluster together, weeping as they clutch one another’s hands. 

Roy looks on as well. Riza can see her own emotions echoed in his expression. Breda helps Sidqui Javed and his wife Vardah from the transport vehicle, and they pause in front of her. “Thank you,” Sidqui says, bowing his head. “For getting us here safely.” Riza clasps both of their hands in hers, and they go to greet their friends. 

“Hey, General, Captain, Breda! Nice of you to finally join us!” 

Riza turns to see Havoc and Rebecca approaching, arm-in-arm. Rebecca rolls her eyes, before offering Riza a pita stuffed with meat. “Don’t mind him. Our convoy got here all of two hours before you guys did.”

“We unloaded your stuff and set it up in our section of the camp. We’ll show you where that is later,” Havoc says, around a mouthful of falafel. “You’re welcome for the hard work, by the way.”

Riza and Roy find Scar in the crowd, talking with Celmira, Mahir, and Alim, from Kassioun. Scar looks more at ease than Riza has ever seen him. He is actually smiling as he talks to the group of community leaders. “Thank you,” Roy says to him. “For leading the advance group for these past three weeks.”

Scar nods in acknowledgement. “Miles and I will give you a tour tomorrow. We’ve established this settlement at the outskirts of the city. The real construction zone begins a few miles from here.”

“We’re looking forward to seeing it,” Riza says. “It sounds like everything is coming along well.”

They are so busy greeting people and reuniting with the advance team that they don’t sit down and eat for an hour; not until Falman’s fiancee Anna brings them paper plates laden with food, and a bowl of un-spiced meat for Black Hayate. Roy and Riza sit by one of the many campfires and eat. They are too hungry to talk much, outside of asking one another if they’ve tried a certain dish yet or not. They both just look around at the scenes unfolding before them, absorbing everything, taking in every detail. 

Riza is pleasantly surprised to note that there’s more integration than she might have expected some months ago. The soldiers and Amestrian civilians mingle with the Ishvalans, especially the Ishvalans and Amestrians from the advance group, who have worked alongside one another every day for the past three weeks. Roy follows her gaze. “This is good,” he comments, in an undertone. “I’m glad to see it.”

It is past two in the morning, after copious amounts of food and music, that the group finally begins to disperse. Maria shows Riza to the women’s shower and bathroom facilities, which are much larger than what Riza expected. She says as much to Maria, inspecting the space, her military canvas bag with a few changes of clothes slung over her shoulder. 

“It can accommodate fifty, and there are two other women’s facilities that can accommodate as many,” Maria says. “I still recommend showering before seven-hundred hours and after twenty-hundred, though. The stalls, sinks, and showers fill up quick, and that was even before the second group got here. We’ll definitely have to build more.”

The water in the shower is barely warm and the pressure is somewhat weak. Riza doesn’t mind. It’s been almost twenty-four hours since she last bathed or slept, and it is a relief to wash off the sweat of a long day of hard work and travel. She blinks, water streaming down into her eyes. She places a hand on the wall of the shower, disoriented.

The shower stall has a wall. A thin wall that doesn’t go too high, covering most people from their shoulders to their knees. It wouldn’t be able to withstand a solid kick. But it is a wall, nevertheless. The last time Riza showered in Ishval, there hadn’t been designated women’s shower facilities. There hadn’t been walls. Each tiny, narrow stall was separated from the ones on either side of it only by flimsy, translucent curtains. 

Riza takes a deep breath, forcing the memories back. (Of taking quick, tense showers late at night to avoid the male soldiers. Of scrubbing herself down with the thin, harsh bars of soap, fingernails deliberately scraping her skin, leaving red marks, unable to find a moment’s respite from her thoughts.  _ You’re a murderer, a murderer, a murderer. _ )

She listens to the sounds around her, trying to ground herself in the present. Other women and girls are showering too; the new arrivals from Kassioun and Moudarres. Some bathe with their young children, talking to them in Ishvalan and Amestrian. Some of them sing softly to themselves. 

Riza dresses and readies herself for bed. She makes her way to their section of the camp, which Maria showed her earlier. The sight of all the tents makes her throat grow tight. This camp is so reminiscent of the snipers’ camp during the war. The only difference is in size. There are more tents here. 

Her tent and Roy’s are set away from the rest, mere steps from one another. Neither of them had to request that, and Riza spares a moment for gratitude at how well their unit knows them. Black Hayate lies just outside of her tent, loyally standing guard. Someone, probably Fuery, Roy, or Rebecca, had set out a water dish for him. “Good boy.” Riza pets him, and he licks her hand. “You were so good today.”

She enters her tent, and goes still as she does so.

It is identical. The thick, tan-colored cotton canvas. The basic beige camp cot at the far right side of the tent. The small folding writing desk, and the lamp set atop it. Her boxes are stacked neatly at the left wall. Roy stands by the writing desk, clad in dark uniform pants and a white t-shirt, his hair wet.

He could theoretically be here for work-related reasons. But he holds his arms out to her, and Riza crosses the tent in a few quick strides, hugging him tightly. They cling to one another, breathing each other in, savoring the closeness. 

They stay like that for a long time. Roy rubs her back and kisses the top of her head, and Riza rests her cheek against his shoulder. When they finally pull apart, they look into one another’s eyes for several moments in wordless understanding. Today has been one of the most momentous days of both of their lives. The true beginning of the project that they have looked forward to for the past ten years. The beginning of the next half decade of their lives, at least.

Roy cups her cheek in one hand, brushing the pad of his thumb against her cheekbone. Riza leans into the gentle touch. “How are you doing?” 

His voice is raspy with exhaustion. “I’m…”  _ Fine  _ is her instinctive response. Riza catches herself before it slips out. She has felt joy and happiness tonight, at watching the Ishvalans celebrate their return home. She has felt grief that they were driven out at all, because of her own actions, and those of her fellow soldiers. She has felt grief for the thousands and thousands of Ishvalans who used to populate this land. 

Her own pain, the ache of triggered memories, brought on by acts as simple as looking up at the starry sky or bathing or looking at the tents, feels small and selfish in comparison. It weighs her down nevertheless.

“It’s been a lot,” Riza says, at last.

“I understand.” Roy hugs her again, and Riza knows he does. Out of the entire team of Amestrians, only Roy, Charlie and his subordinates, General Hall, Armstrong, and herself had been in Ishval during the war. Only they would know the same bitter mix of grief and guilt. 

He sits on the edge of the cot, and Riza sits on his lap. She rubs his shoulders, noting the tense set of the muscles there. Both of their eyes are swollen and red with exhaustion. “How are you?”

“I’m looking ahead,” Roy replies, after a moment. “If I look back, I’ll get lost.”

Riza commits the words to memory. “That’s wise. I’ll remember that.” 

They cuddle in silence for a little while longer and exchange tender, tired kisses. They’ve been too busy over the past couple of weeks to spend much time together like this. Even now, it’s probably inching close to three-hundred hours, and they have to be up early tomorrow in order to begin their work.

“I should go,” Roy murmurs, reading her mind. “I’d normally be fine getting up before sunrise to get back to my own tent, but I don’t trust myself not to miss that mark tonight. We should be up by eight. There’s a lot to do tomorrow.”

Riza nods. A completely uncharacteristic pang of fear and apprehension cuts through her. She doesn’t want to lie down in this cot (just like she used to) and be alone here, with her thoughts and the memories. 

Her attempt at keeping her expression neutral must have been weak. Roy draws her close, and kisses her forehead. “Bring Hayate in to sleep with you. Major Miles says the camp’s safe. There hasn’t been a single incident in all the time the advance team has been here.”

Black Hayate has to stay outside to alert her to any possible disturbances or threats to Roy’s sleeping quarters during the night. Riza doesn’t point this out. “All right,” she says, instead.

They kiss good night at the entrance to her tent. Riza returns to her cot, extinguishes the lamp, and pulls the thin covers over herself. She clutches the covers so tightly her knuckles go white. It is difficult to release her grip. 

Even the sensation of being on one of these cots again - the feel, even the smell, of the thin covers against her skin--

(She remembers curling up in her cot underneath the thin covers night after night, crying herself to sleep.)

_ If I look back, I am lost,  _ Riza reminds herself. She repeats the mantra in her mind over and over again, like a prayer, until sleep finally comes.

-

Riza is no stranger to hard work. She has always found purpose and satisfaction in it, since long before she enlisted in the military. It energizes her mentally, even when it leaves her physically exhausted. She performs at her best when she is firing on all cylinders. 

With that being said, her hard work hasn’t been this physically demanding since her days in the military academy. Ten years of regular weightlifting and running have made her stronger than most women. She is able to maintain a seven-minute mile time for six miles straight without undue struggle. She can easily deadlift and bench press one hundred and fifty pounds (which is, incidentally, Roy’s body weight.) At the end of every night, Riza still falls into her cot, limp and sore from long days of labor, her mind buzzing with thoughts of everything that must be accomplished tomorrow. New calluses form on her hands. The ache in her arms, legs, and back tells her that she’s building more muscle.

Rebuilding a city from the ground up is a massive endeavor. But with hundreds of people at work from sunrise until sunset, dedicating themselves wholly to the task, Riza and Roy have progress to note every day. The work is tremendously satisfying because of that alone. Every day, Ras Al-Ayn looks a little more like a city, and not a camp. 

Riza finds that the longer and harder she works, the easier it is to keep difficult thoughts at bay. There is no time for ruminating or pain when she is working alongside Roy, Scar, Kaela, Eliane, and two dozen others, building a temple from solid rock. There is no time to dwell on her own difficulties when she is visiting groups of Ishvalans with Roy, Rebecca, Major Miles, Mahir, Celmira, and the five psychiatrists, to check in on how all the civilians are adjusting, and listen to their needs and concerns. 

The first week passes in the blink of an eye. Rebecca had planned to stay for Riza’s twenty-seventh birthday on the first of September, and then return to Central City the day after. The two of them go on a walk after dinner with Black Hayate, leaving the camp to go sit atop a nearby hill and watch the sun set. 

“The sunsets are amazing here.” Rebecca tilts her head up, admiring the brilliant hues of crimson and gold above them. 

“It is beautiful,” Riza agrees. “I never noticed, before.” All the smoke and fire left a dark haze over the sky. Sunrise and sunset looked frightening, not lovely like this. She realizes her lapse, and chides herself for it.  _ If I look back, I am lost.  _ She redirects her train of thought immediately. “Are you ready to head back tomorrow? It’s going to be a long drive.”

“Oh, I’m not going back,” Rebecca informs her, as casually as if she’s reporting on the germination of the wheat seeds planted last month. “I decided that I’m going to stay.”

Riza turns to face her so quickly that she almost pulls a muscle in her neck. “What?”

“Yeah.” Rebecca grins, clearly amused by her response. It’s rare that anyone gets such an unguarded reaction out of her. “I told Grumman when he called last week to check in.”

“And you didn’t say anything to me until now?” Riza glowers. “I should push you off this hill, Catalina.”

“Try it, Hawkeye, I dare you,” Rebecca challenges. “Maria and I have been working on my hand-to-hand skills. I’m a force to be reckoned with now.”

Riza shakes her head, a smile spreading over her face. “I thought you and Havoc were going to make the whole long-distance thing work.”

“This isn’t because of Jean.” Rebecca’s tone can be clearly translated to,  _ Riza, you idiot.  _ “We definitely could have done the long-distance thing. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and it makes the reunions extra special.” She smirks. “Not that you’d know that, since you and your man are never more than three feet from each other.”

Riza pointedly looks around the hill for Roy. “Inaccurate. I don’t see him right now.”

Rebecca makes a face at her. “You know what I mean.” Her demeanor grows more serious. “I’ve always known this was something you wanted to do someday. I knew it was important work - to you, and in general - but I don’t think I really got it until I saw it for myself. This is the right thing to do for the Ishvalans, and I want to be a part of that,” Rebecca says simply. “I think all of us soldiers have to be a part of it. It’s what we owe to the Ishvalans. It’s way more important than anything I’d do if I was in Central. It’s more important than anything I’ve done in all my years in East City, on Grumman’s staff.” 

Riza rests a hand on her shoulder, moved. “Thank you. We’re lucky to have you with us. How did Grumman take it?”

“He said he’d miss having my cute face and sparkling personality around the office, but he’s happy for me.” Rebecca laughs. “He said that I’ve done my time with keeping him in line and doing boring administrative work. He’s pleased that the two of us won’t be separated, either.” 

“I am, too. I’m glad that he’s fine with it.” Riza frowns, a thought occurring to her. “I’ll call him more often, since you won’t be there to keep an eye on him. Who’s your new commanding officer?” 

“He would love that.” Rebecca scratches Black Hayate underneath the chin. “He’s filing my transfer paperwork so that Armstrong’s going to be my new CO. He said, and I quote,  _ you and Havoc won’t have any issues with the anti-fraternization laws. Don’t forget to invite me when you get married. _ Can you believe it?” 

Riza can’t help it. She starts laughing. “Like you haven’t planned the wedding already.”

Rebecca scowls at her with mock severity. “You and that grandfather of yours, Riza, you’re both the same…”

-

Rebecca’s presence in Ishval helps. It is yet another tangible reminder that everything is different this time. Riza still struggles, quietly, privately. The flashbacks, the intrusive thoughts, strike several times every day and night, catching her unaware. They happen while standing in line to refill her canteen, or when she is sitting in front of a campfire at night and eating dinner. They happen most often while she checks on the status of the homes and the businesses that are under construction. 

Riza looks at these fledgling buildings, inching closer to completion every day. In one instant, she admires progress. Then she blinks, and the buildings are in ruin, blown apart by explosions, or engulfed in flame. Another blink (or a nudge from Hayate against her leg), and the buildings are intact again, if half-finished. These daily experiences; the inability to trust her own eyes; are profoundly disorienting. They leave Riza’s heart pounding, her chest aching to the point where it is difficult to catch her breath again. 

There are so many children in the Ishvalan community here. Watching them play, or passing by their large outdoor schoolrooms, would normally bring her comfort. It is terribly bittersweet instead. 

(Riza remembers burying the tiny body of the Ishvalan child, on her last day in Ishval before returning to Central. That child should be alive. He should be here now, ten years later, a fifteen or sixteen-year-old playing football and helping with the reconstruction effort alongside his friends. So many children like him had been slaughtered. Riza develops a terrible, persistent intrusive thought of the spirits of the children killed by the Amestrian soldiers, sitting or playing alongside the children living in their homeland now. It makes her cold all over, despite the warm temperatures of Ishval in September.) 

Nights are always difficult. Riza rests her head against Roy’s chest at night before she falls asleep, and after she wakes up from her nightmares. She counts the steady beats of his heart in an attempt to soothe herself. But that reminds her of when she used to do the same thing with Reid, when she had been here to destroy and not rebuild. Riza curls up into a tight, miserable ball. There is no escaping the triggers. 

Especially not after she makes the mistake of cutting her hair short, returning to the style she favored in her childhood and teenage years. She thought it would offer her a reprieve from the heat. It does. Rebecca and the unit compliment her on the style, declaring it a “throwback” and “a return to classic Riza.” In the privacy of her tent at night, Roy smooths his fingers through the cropped locks and smiles at her. “I liked your hair long, too. But this reminds me of how you looked when I fell in love with you, all those years ago.”

That makes Riza smile, and she kisses him. But every time she looks in the mirror when brushing her teeth in the morning and at night, she sees herself as she was back then. She feels the phantom weight of the sniper rifle slung across her back, and she shudders. 

They redouble all of their construction efforts as September turns into October. Construction will become more difficult once the rainy season starts in November. She is working at the primary school today. Yesterday had been devoted to getting the foundation in place, and Riza and the other workers are hoping to finish the rough framing of the entire school today. 

“Riza?” Almasi’s question jolts her out of her work. “Are you all right?”

Riza stops hammering the nail into place, and checks on her injured finger. It has grown more swollen since she last checked on it. She missed her mark with the hammer a little while ago, and accidentally slammed her own index finger with it. It had been a careless, clumsy mistake. Her finger is tender and sore now, but it’s a trivial concern. It won’t stand in the way of her work. “I’m fine. I’ll ice it later if it still hurts.”

“It’s not just that.” Almasi looks worried. “You keep rubbing your chest. Are you okay?”

“Oh.” Her breaths have been shallow, her chest tight and painful, just like her shoulders and neck. It is a common enough occurrence that Riza has become used to coexisting with the discomfort. “Yeah. I’m just…” She hadn’t slept well last night. It is hard to come up with an excuse, and Riza fumbles on her words. “Maybe I poured a little too much harissa sauce on my lunch.”

Almasi doesn’t appear convinced. The young woman had been one of the radio engineers and news broadcasters in Moudarres, and she became fast friends with Fuery as soon as the two of them were introduced. She is every bit as sensitive and observant as he is. She climbs down from her ladder and holds a hand out to Riza. “I want to take you to the infirmary.” 

“That won’t be necessary. I’m sure it’ll pass.” 

Almasi gets a look at her injured finger and recoils. “Your finger is purple! Come on. Someone will take over for us in a minute once they see that our spots are empty.”

Riza considers refusing. But part of being a leader is setting an example, and she doesn’t want to set a poor example by encouraging others to continue working through their injuries. She reluctantly climbs down from her own ladder and joins Almasi. They haven’t even left the room before Hadia and Vardah take their places, resuming the work on the framing.

There are several small infirmaries scattered throughout the extensive construction sites and the camp. The closest is only a few minutes away from the school. This one is manned by Anna Becker, soon to be Anna Becker-Falman. They find Anna unpacking boxes of medication, humming to herself. She closes the medicine cabinet when she sees them, and raises a hand in greeting. “Hi, Almasi, Riza. How’s it going?”

“I hit my finger with a hammer. It was a stupid mistake.” Riza catches her other hand drifting to her chest to rub it. She curls it into a fist and lowers it, self-conscious. It’s too late. Both Almasi and Anna have noticed. “I’m having some chest pain as well, but I’m sure it’s just heartburn.”

“Hmm.” Anna examines the finger, wincing slightly. “It’s good that the fingernail isn’t completely shattered. I’ll bandage that up, and we should talk about that chest pain.” She looks at Almasi. “Thanks for bringing her in.”

“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” Riza tells her. 

“Don’t worry about it. I hope you feel better.” Almasi waves and heads back in the direction of the school.

“You look so disgruntled,” Anna teases, as she leads her back to the small exam room. “It’s a good thing that Almasi made you come in. Chest pain should never be ignored.” 

Anna bandages her finger, and then she asks Riza to roll up her uniform pants to both knees. She inspects her calves, prodding at them. “No bruising, and no cold or hot spots,” she muses. “That’s good. I often see bruising on the legs if there’s a blood clot. Do you feel any tenderness in your muscles, or any fatigue?”

“No more than usual.” Riza frowns. “A blood clot?”

“It can be a risk, if you’re taking a contraceptive pill or injection.” Anna places her stethoscope in her ears. “Do you have any shortness of breath?”

“No.” Riza realizes, as she says it, that it isn’t the full truth. “Sometimes,” she amends. “But only after--”

She cuts herself off. Only after a flashback, or an intrusive thought, or waking up in the dead of night from a nightmare. 

“Only after what?” Anna presses. 

Riza knows that Anna is only trying to help. She is trying to do her duty as a physician. She averts her eyes, staring at a point on the floor. “Only when I have certain thoughts,” she replies stiffly. 

Anna places her stethoscope on her chest, listening to her heartbeat. Her brows draw together in concentration. She finally removes it. “Everything sounds normal there.” She sits across from Riza and studies her. “How has your sleep been?”

Riza remains silent for a few moments. “Not optimal.” If it were any of her other friends who were asking, she wouldn’t be so open. She doesn’t need anyone worrying about her. They have much more pressing concerns and priorities. 

“What’s the issue, if you don’t mind me asking? Delayed sleep onset, or sleep fragmentation, or waking up earlier than you should?”

“All of those.” She plucks at a loose thread on her uniform pants. “Depending on the night.” Riza hesitates again. There is no point in confiding the reason for her troubled sleep. In her experience, nothing helps with nightmares except time. She has only been in Ishval for two full months. Two years from now, she may not have the same problems. 

“Riza.” Anna’s tone is gentle. “The problems you’re experiencing with sleep, and the chest pain, paired with the shortness of breath after the troubling thoughts you’ve mentioned - all of these sound like they could be due to anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder. Especially considering your past experiences. I could prescribe some medication for you, to help with the anxiety and the insomnia. But I think it would be helpful for you to consider seeing a member of the psychiatry team.”

Riza’s instinct is to refuse. She can’t give voice to any of the memories that crowd into her mind. Talking about the war as she had with Edward was one thing. Relaying her own memories and experiences is something else entirely. Besides, there is no time for it. “I--”

They are cut off by a familiar voice calling her name, from the front of the infirmary. There is an edge of exhaustion and concern to it. “Captain Hawkeye?”

Riza rises from the exam table at once, and Anna follows her to the front. Roy stands there with Black Hayate at his side. He is slightly out of breath. His gaze fixes on her, unguarded concern evident in his dark eyes. “Miles and I ran into Almasi. I asked her where you were, and she said that you were here.”

Riza raises her left hand, showing him the bandaged finger. “It’s a minor injury, General. Nothing to be concerned about.”

Roy’s shoulders slump. “Good,” he sighs, obviously relieved. “That’s good. Thanks for taking care of her, Anna. Come for a walk with me, Captain.” 

“Of course. I’m always happy to help.” Anna rests a hand on her shoulder. “Come see me if you have any questions, okay? We can talk about it more.”

Riza murmurs her agreement, ignoring Roy’s curious stare. She joins him and Black Hayate, following him out of the infirmary. “What happened to your hand?” he asks.

“I missed the nail, and hit my finger with the hammer instead.” Internally, Riza chastises herself for the mistake again. She doesn’t make mistakes like that. 

Roy grimaces. He very nearly puts a hand on her back, as any person would do to their lover. Then he catches himself, folding his arms behind his back instead. “That’s not like you, Captain. Were you tired?”

“I was careless, sir. It won’t happen again.” 

Roy leads them away from the construction zone and away from the camp, toward the hills in the distance. There’s no reason for them to take a break in the middle of the day like this, but Riza can’t bring herself to chide him for slacking off. It’s rare that they have any time alone together, save for nights in her tent, curled up in her too-small cot. As soon as they are properly alone, Roy slows his pace a little, allowing himself to fall into step close beside her. Riza can sense his curiosity as clearly as she can pick up on the scent of rain in the air. He doesn’t ask her what Anna had been referring to, though. He is giving her time, as he almost always does.

They climb to the top of one of the hills, Black Hayate scampering ahead of them. The three of them sit close together, admiring the sight beneath them.

“Ras Al-Ayn will spread out as far as the eye can see from this vantage point, one day,” Riza comments. 

“I like imagining what it’ll look like at night, all lit up.” Roy smiles slightly. “It’ll be the first of many new cities in Ishval.”

Riza allows herself to lean against him, and Roy wraps an arm around her. She breathes in, more aware than ever of the tightness in her chest. She doesn’t want to say it, even to him. She has confessed worse in the past, but this is almost as difficult. “Anna suggested that I see one of the psychiatrists. For anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder.”

The words come out as stiff as they had in Anna’s office. Roy looks at her sharply, and Riza stares out over the city. 

“Have you been struggling?” Roy asks.

Riza nods wordlessly.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” 

The question would have been angry, once. He would have snapped that at her, once. Now, there is hurt and confusion, but not anger. Riza rubs her chest. “You’re the leader of this rebuilding effort. You have a good team around you, but ultimately, this endeavor rests on your shoulders. I didn’t want to burden you with this. I’m your Captain. My role is to aid you with your concerns, not add to them.”

Roy makes a small, frustrated sound. “You’re also my girlfriend. My role is to aid you with your concerns, and not allow you to bear them alone.” He runs a hand through his hair, making it stand on end. “I’ve neglected you. I’ve been too preoccupied with my work and managing my own issues.”

“Those are the priorities. As they should be.”

“You’re a priority to me, just as much as anything else,” Roy retorts. He takes her hand. “More so, even.”

Riza looks away. “Don’t say that. Not here, of all places.” Grief surges inside her, leaving her unable to speak, unable to even think, for several moments. It is so acute she wants to cry out. She stifles the temptation to hug her knees to her chest and curl up in a ball.

Roy rests a hand on her back, rubbing the tight muscles of her shoulders. The crippling misery finally recedes, and Riza massages her chest again. It hurts so badly. 

“It’ll help, my heart,” Roy says, very quietly. “I didn’t want to do it either. I was never able to open up to anyone besides you and Hughes. But I wouldn’t have been able to bear this, if not for my sessions with Carnahan.”

“How do you do it?” Riza buries her head in her hands. “How do you talk about it and not want to die?”

“I did want to, at first. It was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done.” Roy holds her close, and Riza feels him shiver. “But I pushed through that, and it was worth it. I promise you that. I would never lead you to something that I thought would hurt you more than it helped.” 

Riza nestles against him for a while before drawing back, wiping at her eyes somewhat self-consciously. “What is it like?” she asks.

It’s the first time she has asked Roy anything about his weekly sessions with Dr. Carnahan. Roy told her about these sessions some months ago, in late summer, though he had been seeing Carnahan since May. In the time since, Roy has rarely revealed anything about his sessions, except to say that they were productive or helpful. Riza hasn’t asked, either. It’s personal. They have known and trusted one another for a long time, but as close as they are and always have been, there are some things they have always kept to themselves.

“When we first met, we got to know each other a little. I asked him about his experience working with other veterans and victims of violent crime. Carnahan asked me about my background, and what I wanted to get out of the experience.” Roy looks down at his hands. “I told him what I told you. That I needed to be the best man I could be. The best version of myself. The people around me deserved that much.” He lapses into silence for a while. “Then he asked me to tell him more about myself. How I grew up, with Chris. How I became fascinated with science and alchemy. It all unfolded from there.” 

“Thank you. That helps.” Riza processes her thoughts. “I won’t have to go in and just tell them everything.” There are only two people she has truly opened up to in her entire life. It had taken years for her to grow comfortable enough with Roy and Rebecca to reveal what she has. 

“No. It was weeks before we even began discussing Ishval. Though that may be different for you, since you’re already here.” Roy looks at her. “Carnahan is good. I can vouch for him, if you’d like to try seeing him. Armstrong has been seeing Jeffries - Quinley, not Avery - and he’s said good things.”

Riza strokes Black Hayate’s fur. “I’m not sure if we should both see Carnahan, considering…” Her hand stills, as a consideration suddenly occurs to her. “Does he know about us?”

“He knows that I have a girlfriend named Elizabeth. The psychiatrists are all civilians, and they’re bound by certain confidentiality laws that military doctors aren’t. So there should be no risk to us.” 

“There’s no such thing as no risk when others are involved.” Riza sits up straighter, trying to stretch her shoulders. “I’ll ask Anna to introduce me to Avery Jeffries.” It might be easier for her to talk with a woman. She hasn’t interacted much with Avery, but she has seen her talking with many of the Ishvalan women in the community. She seems kind. 

Roy picks up on the trepidation in her voice. “Hey,” he says quietly, getting her attention. He rests his hand on hers. “I’m always here. Don’t feel that you need to keep things to yourself any longer. I can support you, just as you’ve always been there for me.” 

Riza leans against him, moved by the offer. “Thank you.”

-

Riza finds Anna that evening, before she can lose her resolve, and asks her to introduce her to Avery. Anna agrees at once.

Riza and Avery decide to meet on top of the hill at sunset, two days from now. Despite the questions she asked of Roy, Riza spends the following days battling relentless anxiety. She lies awake at night, holding on to one of Roy’s arms.  _ It’s just going to make things worse,  _ a small, dark voice whispers to her. (This voice is as cold and sibilant as Pride’s.)  _ You should bury it. Like you did with the Ishvalan child. Nothing good can come out of exhuming things that should stay buried deep down inside. _

The other voice that chastises her is harsh and brusque, like her father’s had been. (Still, after all these years.)  _ Your suffering now is the price you pay for what you did to the Ishvalans. What you allowed the Flame Alchemist to do to the Ishvalans. You don’t deserve relief from any of it. _

Riza cries, overwhelmed, and frightened of what lies ahead. Roy wakes up and holds her tight, offering her soft words of comfort until the tears finally subside.

By the time she and Black Hayate climb to the top of the hill that evening, Riza is already numb, exhausted. She is so worn out from all of the anxiety, and from the day’s labor, that she can no longer feel apprehension. She finds Avery waiting for her, and Riza holds out her hand. “Thank you for meeting me so late in the day.”

“Of course.” Avery is a petite woman, hardly five feet tall, but her handshake is firm and strong. “I’m glad we could find a time that worked for you.” She bends to pet Black Hayate. “Who’s this cute little guy? I’ve seen him following you and General Mustang around camp.” 

“His name is Black Hayate.” Riza smiles down at the dog. She is even more grateful for his presence than usual. “He’s military trained. He’s also a good companion to me.”

Riza remembers Roy’s advice, and she asks Avery about her professional background. “I trained at Central Medical School, and I’ve been working at the Women’s Resource Center and the Domestic Abuse Center in Central for the past five years,” Avery explains. “I’ve worked with women and girls of all ages and backgrounds.”

They sit down, watching the sun sink lower in the sky. “Tell me about yourself,” Avery says. “I know your role in the Ishvalan reconstruction project, as the assistant to General Mustang, and about your previous service as a sniper.”

Riza blinks. “Then you already know everything about me.”

Avery hums thoughtfully. “I don’t think so. If you could tell me more about what you like to do outside of work, that would be a good place for us to start.”

-

Riza can speak about many things with the calm surety that is second nature to her. Chief among those things is her love, passion, and dedication to her work and her goals, and her vision for a just future; a rebuilt Ishval and a completely reformed Amestris. 

Avery asks about the people in her life. Riza tells her without hesitation that her unit and Rebecca are some of the best people she has ever known. She tells Avery about Edward and Alphonse, and how she had learned from them and admired them, even as she’d felt the impulse to protect them. She talks about the completely unexpected connections she has made within the Ishvalan community, with Kaela and her family, Eliane, Hadia and Rahat, Almasi, Scar, the Javeds, and the teenagers who wave hello when they see her passing by. 

It is easy to speak with clarity and certainty about the future, and even some aspects of the present. When Avery asks her about the past, and about what is troubling her now, Riza falters. Her speech grows halting and hesitating in a way that is nearly unrecognizable to her. Or she is silent for stretches of time, before words spill out of her in a painful rush, and then she clams up again. 

Roy had been right. Sometimes talking about certain things makes Riza want to die. It makes her feel like she is close to drowning in her own guilt. Sometimes it is even worse than what she feared it would be. She weeps through her words, as Black Hayate puts his paw on her arm to comfort her. 

But sometimes it is cathartic. Sometimes it is a relief to express the thoughts and emotions and memories she has kept locked away for the past decade. Avery always listens with compassion and kindness, and without judgment. She only pushes back when Riza says that her suffering and pain is deserved. “You deserve to heal, Riza,” she says.

After every session, every week, sometimes twice a week, Roy meets Riza at the base of the hill. They walk back to her tent. Sometimes they talk. Riza quietly relays the strategies Avery has suggested she practice before their next session. Roy shares his experience with strategies that Carnahan has suggested to him. Sometimes they don’t talk. 

Always, when they return to her tent, Riza turns to Roy for support and solace. They turn the lamp out and cuddle or kiss. Roy tells her that he loves her. Sometimes, if she needs it, she pulls him on top of her, and asks him to help her forget everything but him, and the two of them.

-

Avery tells Riza that recovery from trauma involves the ability to successfully live in the present without being overwhelmed by thoughts and feelings from the past. “You did quite well with that for years,” she says. “But naturally, it’s harder now that you’re surrounded by triggers.”

They practice thinking and focusing in a way that helps Riza become more aware of her present experiences. “It’s strange,” she tells Roy, one night as they return from her session with Avery. They don’t head straight back to her tent, instead stopping to look at the stars. “I didn’t realize how easy it was for me to slip backwards in time. Have you experienced the same thing?”

“Almost every day, when I first arrived here. I felt the same way when I used my Flame Alchemy, sometimes.” Roy looks up at the sky. The stars are brilliant here. There are thousands more visible than there were in Central or East City. “I’d lift my hand and snap, and suddenly I would see something entirely different in front of me than what was really there.”

Riza practices, in every waking moment. It is tiring to train her mind to operate in such a way, but she has never shied away from hard work. She slows down in her work somewhat, and takes a few extra moments to focus on the roughness of stone underneath her hands, or the weight of the shovel she is gripping, and the earth she is moving. The focus on the present helps keep her mind from slipping back. 

She practices this during other difficult moments, like when she is showering, or brushing her teeth, or trying to fall asleep. Riza focuses on the sound of someone singing a love song, a few shower stalls down, and on the taste of her new Ishvalan toothpaste, made from neem leaves. At night, she breathes in the scent of Roy’s soap, and quietly treasures the feeling of her cheek pressed against his chest.

Riza looks at the fledgling city around her, not just to track the progress in construction, but to admire the little details. The Ishvalan architectural style is completely different from what she is used to. This style is all clean, sharp right angles, and one-story buildings made of stone. She takes note of the cornices and friezes and other ornamental details that artists are adding to the buildings springing up around the city. The Ishvalan style for these design flairs is different from the styles she’s accustomed to as well. 

Sometimes memories still surface, of buildings in ruin, consumed by flame. Riza closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. When she opens her eyes, she focuses anew on the intact construction in front of her. The house that will be a safe and comfortable home to a family, for decades to come. 

-

Riza passes by Ras Al-Ayn’s schools on the way to begin her construction duties, and on the way back to camp in the evening. Her nightmares have begun to ease their chokehold on her. One intrusive thought - the vision of the spirits of the lost Ishvalan children mingling with the living children - remains.

Riza deliberates over whether to tell Avery this or not. She does, eventually. “It’s difficult.” She pets Black Hayate to comfort herself. “But I would be worried if I didn’t see them or think of them anymore.”

“Why is that?” Avery asks.

“Because that would mean I’ve forgotten them.” Riza swallows over the tightness in her throat. “And I shouldn’t forget them.”

-

Riza eventually arrives at a point where, when she thinks of the lost children, she can mourn them, and the lives they should have led, without being consumed by the horror of the past. 

She thinks of the lost children, and she looks at the children and teenagers of Ishval now, and she thinks of the future. She re-commits herself, with fierce intensity, to the idea that no Ishvalan should ever again suffer the same fate as the youngest victims of the war.

-

The pain in her chest eventually begins to subside.

-

“This has helped a great deal,” Riza says to Avery. Construction has progressed to the point where the psychiatrists and doctors have their own clinic now, but Riza still prefers to meet Avery outside, atop the hill. She prefers breathing in the fresh air, and letting the breeze stir her hair, and having the sky above them. “Thank you.”

“I’m glad to hear it. You’ve made remarkable progress.” Avery pauses. “We’ve talked about the war, and how that has impacted you since coming back to Ishval. I would be happy to continue our sessions. There are some other things we could discuss, if you’re open to it.”

Riza’s instinct is to decline. She began seeing Avery with one particular goal in mind, and she has made significant strides toward achieving that goal. But Avery has been helpful to her, and she could hear her out. “Like what?”

“Your parents. And some of your other relationships, besides the ones you’ve shared with me, like Rebecca and your unit.”

Riza’s shoulders tense. 

“You don’t have to make up your mind now,” Avery hastens to add. “Just let me know if you’re interested. I’ll keep this evening appointment on Wednesdays available for you.”

Riza stands, and shakes Avery’s hand. “Thank you. I’ll let you know.”

-

Riza ponders it for almost a week. She brings it up to Roy one night, while they are lifting weights together in the gym that Havoc, Rebecca, Breda, Maria, and Armstrong assembled. The five of them put together one gym for soldiers, and a much larger community gym for the civilians. The community gym is almost always heavily used, but the hour is late enough that the two of them have the soldiers’ gym to themselves.

“You like her, and you feel comfortable talking with her.” Roy sits up on the bench and slides a few plates off his barbell, adjusting it from his bench-press weight to hers. “I don’t think it’s a bad thing. I…” He is slightly red, and not from the exertion of bench-pressing two hundred and thirty pounds for five sets of five reps. “I’ve talked to Carnahan about my parents, and Hughes, and you. Or Elizabeth. It’s been almost as helpful as talking about the war.”

“All right.” Riza gestures for him to get off the bench. She takes his place, rolling her shoulders as she prepares for the lift. “I’m nervous,” she admits. Her relationships have been more strained than Roy’s, by far. With her father, and with men in general, before him.

Roy sweeps her bangs away from her forehead, a tender, reassuring caress. It’s much too bold an action for such a public space. “General,” Riza reproves, leaning away.

Roy smirks at her, unfazed by the admonition. “Captain.” 

-

“My mother was my closest friend.” Riza sees Cintra in her mind’s eye, sitting beside her at the piano, teaching her where to place her fingers. “We did everything together. She was gentle and sweet, and…” 

Riza closes her eyes for a moment. “She hugged and held me often. She would give me good morning and good night kisses. She held me in her lap and rubbed my back when she told me stories. I think I missed that the most, after.”

“The time you spent with her?” Avery asks.

“That, and just--” Riza shrugs, self-conscious. “Being touched. Being held. I would hold my own hand, and give myself hugs, and pet my own hair. It wasn’t the same.”

“Your father didn’t do any of that for you?”

Riza almost laughs. “No,” she says. “No.”

-

Her face goes red with shame when she talks about Reid. Riza is the consummate soldier now (ignoring the fact that she’s currently sleeping with her commanding officer.) The fact that she was ever foolish, reckless, and stupid enough to sleep with a soldier in her chain of command, on the front lines, is galling to her. 

“It was stupid,” Riza says. “It was dangerous. It could have destroyed my career before it even began. It could have destroyed my whole life, if he’d been a different sort of person. I should have pushed him away.” 

“It’s interesting that you say that,” Avery comments. “Instead of saying that he shouldn’t have kissed you in the first place.” 

Riza smirks humorlessly. “You sound like my partner.” She pets Black Hayate. “I can’t control what others do or how they feel. The only thing I can control is how I respond. Reid did what he did, and I should have had a different response. But when he touched me, I… It’s like I hadn’t had water in years, and I got a taste of it, and I just wanted to drown in it. I didn’t even…” She folds her hands in her lap, embarrassed. “I didn’t even have a crush on him. I liked him, but not as more than a friend. But he was kind to me, and I loved that. I just wanted to keep getting the attention he gave me.”

“How did that make you feel?” Avery asks. “In the moment. Not now.”

“Ashamed.” Riza can’t look Avery in the eye. “I knew I was conducting myself poorly. That we were both conducting ourselves poorly,” she corrects. “I knew we were breaking the anti-fraternization laws. But I enjoyed feeling loved and special. It was the only respite I had. The only time I didn’t feel terrible. It was almost addictive.” 

Avery mulls it all over. “Did you ever feel taken advantage of, or scared, or overwhelmed? This was someone you liked and trusted, as a friend and as a superior officer. When he kissed you, he put you in a situation that you absolutely didn’t expect or invite.”

“Scared, yes,” Riza admits quietly. The memories leave a bitter taste in her mouth. “The first time. Just because I didn’t know what I was doing. I wasn’t afraid that he would hurt me. I felt overwhelmed for a while after that, too. But I didn’t feel like I was taken advantage of. Reid would have stopped, if I told him I wanted him to. I know that.”

“Did you want a sexual relationship, at that time? With Reid, or anyone else?”

Riza rubs her chest. “I don’t think so. But I wanted affection, and closeness, and to feel loved. That was the only way I could get those things. That was the only way I did, for a few years after that.” 

She can barely tell Avery about Bresler; about what happened when she returned to the Academy. When she has finally confided everything she had to say, the expression on Avery’s face is troubled. “Riza,” she says, at last. “I’m concerned by how you’ve shifted blame onto yourself here. Again.”

“I hold myself accountable for my actions,” Riza replies steadily. “I was the one who kissed him first.”

“Yes, but he should never have kissed you back. He should never even have let things escalate to the point where the two of you were in a situation where that could happen. It was an abuse of power and trust simply by virtue of your positions of teacher and student, to say nothing of the exploitation of your compromised emotional state at the time.” Riza has never seen Avery look truly angry before. She is trying to mask it now, but her jaw is tight, her shoulders stiff. 

“I’ve been through enough in my life that I don’t often allow myself to think the words  _ should never. _ ” Riza leans down and strokes Black Hayate’s head. Her hand shakes slightly. “It’s not productive. There’s a lot I should never have done. There’s a lot that the people in my life should never have done, either. Reid, Bresler, even General Mustang’s decision to use Flame Alchemy in service of the military.” 

Avery takes that in. “How did it end?”

“When I graduated from the Academy and moved to East City. That same month, he took a position at Fort Briggs and moved north.” Black Hayate nuzzles against Riza’s hand. She struggles to wrap her mind around  _ abuse of power,  _ and  _ exploitation.  _ She shakes her head wordlessly.

“What is it?” Avery asks. 

“I think of words like the ones you used when I think of victims. Vulnerable, defenseless, with something forced upon them.” Her throat is dry. Riza takes a sip of mint tea from her thermos. “I wanted it. How can it be abuse of power, or exploitation, when I wanted it?” 

She realizes, detached, that she’s crying. “He would make brunch and dinner for me, when I stayed over there, on weekends when Rebecca was visiting her family.” (Bresler talked about her assignments at the Academy with her. At night, Riza would rest against him, and they would read history books together. He gave her all the attention and care she had longed for from her father, once.) “No one took care of me like that since Mother died. It didn’t - I knew it was bad, but it didn’t  _ feel  _ bad.”

Avery holds her hand until she regains her composure. “Sometimes abuse doesn’t always feel bad,” she says quietly. “How did it feel? Then and now?”

Riza turns away, wiping at her eyes. “That and Rebecca were the only things that got me through that last semester before I graduated. But I felt ashamed then, and I feel ashamed now. And sad.” The last part just slips out, taking her unaware. “For the girl I was. I was so lost.”

They talk for a long time, about how to let go of the shame and guilt, and how to process the grief and emotions around all of it. In the end, Avery says one thing that sticks with her. “Imagine that you heard this story about another girl. Another cadet in the Academy today. What would you think? Would you hold her accountable for what happened?”

“No,” Riza manages to say. 

“You’re not an exception to human compassion, Riza. Give yourself the same compassion you would show to anybody else, and allow yourself to let go of the shame. It was never yours to carry in the first place.” 

-

They have another session later in the week, and Avery checks in on how she’s doing. “We talked about a lot of difficult things last time. How have you been feeling since then?”

“Fine,” Riza says honestly. The evening call to prayer rings out from the temple in the center of the city. She takes a moment to listen to the now-familiar tones. “It was...actually nice to talk about it. My partner and Rebecca knew about what I disclosed to you, but I’ve never talked with them about it in any detail. I feel unburdened.”

“I’m glad that you’ve been doing well.” Avery smiles, and then her features settle into their usual serious expression. “Can we talk a little bit about your partner today?”

Avery has never asked about who her partner is, and Riza has never revealed any details. She nods warily. 

“How long have you two been together?”

Riza thinks back, counting the months. “It’s been about eight months now.” 

Avery makes a small note of that in her journal. “Are you happy in your relationship?”

“Yes.” Riza weighs how much is safe to discuss. “We’re both busy with our work, but we appreciate the time we are able to spend together.”

“That’s good.” Avery puts her pen down, and regards her thoughtfully. “We’ve talked about how your past relationships had certain similar qualities. Would you say that this one is similar at all?”

Riza smiles wryly. “At first glance, he’s exactly my type. But no. It’s not similar.”

Avery looks a little worried. “How so?”

“He loves me,” Riza replies simply. “And I love him. We’re not just using intimacy with one another to cope with our pain. Everything about it feels different.” She searches for the right words. “It’s satisfying. Truly satisfying, not in a temporary, shallow way. I feel it down to my bones. It’s what I’ve wanted for my entire life.”

Riza pauses. “I followed him to East City, to Central, and now here, to Ishval. I told him once that I’d follow him anywhere - into hell itself, if he asked that of me. When I’m with him, I feel like I’m home.” 

-

The camp outside of Ras Al-Ayn shrinks, as the Ishvalan community moves from the temporary settlement into their own homes. Riza attends Kaela and Eliane’s housewarming celebration, and brings a pot of marigolds as a gift. Eliane, who loves to garden, embraces the terracotta pot. “Kae carried a bouquet of marigolds at our wedding,” she reminisces. “And I wore marigolds in my hair. It’s our favorite flower.”

Riza smiles at them. “I’m glad you like it.”

“I can’t wait to plant them.” Eliane shows her a large bag of jasmine seed pods. “Kaela’s sister gave these to us too. We’ll have a beautiful garden. Do you want some for yours?”

Riza sniffs the jasmine seed pods curiously, wondering if they have the same beautiful scent as jasmine flowers. They do not. “Thank you, but I don’t have a garden.”

“It’s about time that you moved from your tent into a proper house, isn’t it?” Kaela pours all three of them more tea. “Unless you’re planning on returning to Amestris.”

“No. Not for a long while. Years, at least.”

“You can’t keep living in a tent for years,” Eliane points out. 

“Is it…” Riza trails off. 

Kaela reads her mind, and frowns at her. “Of course it’s all right for you all to live alongside us. No one wants the Amestrians living in a camp on the outskirts of the city like second-class citizens.”

“All right.” A tiny thrill of genuine excitement runs through Riza. “I haven’t lived in a house in a long time. Just apartments.”

“Want a tour of our place?” Kaela stands up. “I don’t think this was one you built.”

Riza shakes her head. “I worked on Hadia and Rahat’s, down the street.” 

Eliane grins. “He loves the little swing set that you and Lieutenant Falman put in, by the way.” 

-

Riza and Roy move into their houses within one month. They live next door to one another, in close proximity to Scar, Miles, Breda, Falman, Fuery, Havoc, and the rest of their extended team. Their houses are all small - one bedroom and bathroom, one living area, and one kitchen. Riza’s new home is a fraction of the size of Hawkeye Manor. It is just a little bigger than her apartments in East City and Central.

Riza marvels at her home, walking from one space to the next, and back again. Black Hayate prances at her side, his tail wagging. There is an abundance of natural light in her home. Riza remembers how she had dreamed of a home with lots of light and warmth; a home shared with Roy.

(Roy uses his house, next to hers, as a sort of large study and library. They spend every evening together at her place instead. They cook dinner together and fall asleep beside one another, and wake up together every morning. It is the greatest luxury she has ever experienced. Riza clears space in her closet for Roy’s uniforms and clothing. Their toothbrushes and shampoo bottles sit side-by-side in the bathroom.)

Her small housewarming party ends up drawing a larger crowd than Riza had expected. Rebecca brings her an enormous, brilliantly colored geometric painting created by Mabila Darwish, a prominent local artist. Gracia and Elicia attend, and Elicia and Rahat gift her with a pair of clay dogs that they sculpted in their art class. Kaela and Eliane give her a large collection of spices, an Ishvalan recipe book, and some jasmine seeds. Scar stops by with a potted cactus. 

Riza starts the weekend as she always does, by going for a run with Rebecca, and then out for breakfast. She goes home and plants her jasmine seeds later that morning. Roy works alongside her, helping her plant her tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants. The thought occurs to her that it feels so good to be home. 

-

1916 is a year of change and growth for the Ishvalan community. In February, Roy appoints Celmira Emani, one of the community leaders from Kassioun, and General Hall to head up the development and rebuilding of Saidnaya, in the northern part of Ishval. They travel north with a few hundred volunteers. From their daily reports, Riza hears that Saidnaya is blossoming, just as Ras Al-Ayn had. 

The community in Ras Al-Ayn celebrates its first anniversary in August. The celebration lasts for an entire weekend. Riza and Roy attend every ceremony to which they are invited, and every exhibition of dance, art, theater, and music. Her heart is full all weekend, as she takes it in, and Riza wonders if this is how parents feel at their child’s first birthday.

Grumman, Ling, and Lan Fan visit just after the first anniversary to meet with the Ishvalan Council of Elders, and it is a productive visit. General Armstrong visits shortly afterward and spends long hours in conference with Miles and Scar regarding the progress they have made. “You’ve done passably well, Mustang,” she says to Roy, eating a kebab she bought from Kaela and Eliane’s restaurant. “I’m surprised.” 

Once, Roy would have preened at the compliment from his most vocal opponent. He still preens a little, Riza notes, amused, but then he gives all of them a genuine smile. “I couldn’t have done any of this without a strong team at my side, and the hard work of the community here.” 

“Your team is about to shrink by two.” Armstrong finishes her kebab, and pokes the bamboo stick in Roy’s direction. “I’m taking Falman and Dr. Becker back North with me.”

Falman and Anna depart with Armstrong when she returns to Fort Briggs. Riza embraces both of them tightly and wishes them luck. After seeing them off, she takes a moment to go sit on top of the hill, at the same spot she meets Avery for their sessions. She pets Black Hayate and reflects, thinking of the morning that Edward and Alphonse left. Falman is headed toward a bright future, just like Edward and Alphonse. Riza will miss him, just the same. 

“I know they have to, but I don’t like it when people leave,” Riza tells Black Hayate. She hugs her loyal dog, and he leans into her.

-

Riza receives an envelope postmarked from Resembool in January of 1917. She opens it to find two letters - one in Winry’s neat hand; one in Edward’s untidy scrawl. The wedding invitation falls out next. 

Riza actually exclaims in delight, which is most unlike her. Roy teases her about it for the rest of the night. “You don’t even make that sound when you see puppies, Captain Hawkeye. You don’t even make that sound when you see my face after we’ve been apart.”

Riza narrows her eyes at him. “The only sound I make when I see your face is a sigh of displeasure, General Mustang.”

Roy laughs. “Want to bet?” 

He tries to embrace her, and Riza deftly dodges the hug. 

-

“Are you all going to Resembool in June for the wedding, then?” Eliane asks. 

Riza nods, as she kneads another batch of dough for the pita bread. “The entire Amestrian contingent, except for the medical team.”

“I’ve heard that Resembool is quite scenic,” Kaela comments. “Lots of rolling hills and thick green grass.”

“It is. And lots of sheep.” Riza remembers her first trip to Resembool with Roy, so many years ago. “The new rail line should be finished by that time. We’ll be able to take the train all the way from Ras Al-Ayn to Resembool.”

“Let us know how it is.” Kaela begins chopping scallions, mint, parsley, cucumber, and tomatoes for the tabbouleh. “Maybe Ellie and I will take a weekend away one of these days.”

“Or we could take the train in the other direction to Xing,” Eliane says hopefully. “That section should be finished by the end of this year. It’ll be worth waiting for.”

Riza agrees. “Resembool is nice, but I think Xing would make a better vacation. The General and I went to Suzhau several years ago. It was lovely.”

“Speaking of General Mustang, when are you two going to tie the knot?” Kaela asks the question so casually. Riza chokes on her water, narrowly avoiding spluttering it all over the counter. 

Eliane pats her on the back. “Kae,” she reproves. “You can’t just ask people when they’re going to get married.”

“Sorry, Riza.” Kaela looks chastened. “I just wondered if you would get married in Ishval or Amestris. Since your grandfather is the head of state there.” 

Riza regains her composure. Denying that she and Roy are in a relationship would be the wisest course of action. But she doesn’t want to lie to her friends. Besides, Kaela and Eliane aren’t stupid. “We can’t get married,” she says, as evenly as she can. “There are military regulations against it. We wouldn’t be able to work together any longer, and I need to stay by the General’s side as his assistant and bodyguard as he continues to advance through the ranks.”

Kaela and Eliane exchange a look. “Oh.” Kaela wipes her hands on her apron, embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

Riza tries to smile. “That’s all right. We’re happy regardless.” 

-

The train to Resembool is comfortable and spacious. Their team takes up the entire compartment, throwing their luggage onto the metal racks above the seats. “This is luxury.” Havoc stretches out on one of the seats. “Much nicer than the trains going into and out of Womiob.”

Rebecca swats him affectionately. “Get your feet off the seats! They’re brand new and they don’t need your dusty boots all over them.”

Riza takes a seat by the window, and Black Hayate sits at her feet. The train pulls away from the station at Ras Al-Ayn, and she is surprised at the bittersweet emotion that stirs inside her. This will be her first vacation in years. For Edward and Winry’s wedding, no less - a wonderful occasion. She and Roy will head to Central after their weekend in Resembool to visit her grandfather. Grumman has hinted heavily that Roy will receive a promotion to Major General while he’s there, and that she’ll be elevated one rank as well, to Major. They will carry letters of promotion back for the rest of their team, too. 

They will only be away from Ishval for two weeks. Still, she’ll miss it. 

Riza turns away from the window, regarding her travel companions instead. Roy is talking to Gracia, while Armstrong and Denny Brosh teach Elicia a game of cards that has apparently been passed on through the Armstrong line for generations. Fuery and Almasi sit hand-in-hand, chatting with Rebecca, Havoc, Breda, and Maria. 

The sight warms her. Their unit has shrunk over the years, with the departure of Edward, Alphonse, and Falman, and the loss of Hughes. But the years have brought them new friends too, with the addition of Brosh, Rebecca, Maria, Almasi, and Gracia. And Anna, at a distance. She and Falman welcomed their baby boy just a month ago. Falman sent a photograph, and the entire unit took one look at it and proclaimed that Victor Falman certainly had his father’s eyes. 

Rebecca notices her attention, and waves her over. “Riza! What are you doing sitting there by yourself? Come over here!”

Riza joins them.

-

Edward and Winry’s backyard wedding is simple and beautiful. They are both radiant with joy. Edward is handsome enough in his suit that Roy, seated beside Riza, grudgingly mutters, “Not bad.” Winry is stunning in her white dress and crown of pink roses. Pinako walks Winry down the aisle, and the two of them embrace before Winry goes to stand at Edward’s side. 

Riza thinks of her own grandfather suddenly. It’s been almost a year since Grumman’s last visit to Ishval. She keeps her gaze trained on Edward and Winry, and thinks of all that both of them have weathered together. She does not allow herself to imagine the wedding she and Roy might have had, if so many things were different. 

Edward and Winry vow to love and cherish one another for the rest of their days. Riza does not allow herself to look at Roy.

-

There is dinner afterwards, served informally out in the backyard, and dancing. Riza and Roy share a table with friends they haven’t seen since Ras Al-Ayn’s first birthday in August of the previous year - Alphonse and Mei, and Ling and Lan Fan. Ling, Lan Fan, and Roy fall into a political discussion while eating an astonishing amount of food at equally shocking speed. Alphonse, Mei, and Riza look on in disbelief. Al and Mei tell her stories about their recent travels to the deeply rural areas of Xing. Mei has an affinity for Ishval because of her friendship with Scar, and she beams at hearing of the developments in Ras Al-Ayn and Saidnaya. 

Riza shares a dance with Edward, later, while Roy shares one with Winry. “I can’t believe I have to look up to look you in the eye now,” Riza says, somewhat ruefully. “Though I am glad that you ended up taller than the General.”

Roy and Winry are close enough to overhear, and Roy glowers at them. “By two inches! Just two lousy inches!”

Riza and Winry roll their eyes. Thankfully, they’re separated on the makeshift dance floor by Sig gracefully lifting Izumi, and Gerso and Pinako’s rather more dramatic lifts. Edward narrows his eyes at Roy and mutters something inaudible. He looks back at her, and his expression softens. “I’m glad you could come, Captain Hawkeye.”

“I wouldn’t have missed it,” Riza replies sincerely.

Edward twirls her around carefully. “You look happy,” he says. “A lot happier than I remember. And more at ease, somehow.”

“I am,” Riza acknowledges. “I’m grateful for that every day.”

Ling requests Edward’s hand for the next dance, and Roy goes to dance with Mei. Not that he could dance with her, anyway, Riza realizes. There is an unspoken mutual understanding between them of something tender and painful about this night. They have kept a slight distance from each other since the ceremony. Roy is so handsome in his dark suit, his hair slicked back, that it almost hurts to look at him. 

Riza retreats to her table, a small glass of wine in hand. It’s a tiny serving; enough for her to keep her wits about her in case she should need to spring into action as a soldier and bodyguard. Both of her guns are holstered at her thighs, underneath the skirt of her silver silk dress.

She scans the backyard for Gracia instinctively - the person who is most likely to find this beautiful night to be a difficult one. Gracia is dancing with Elicia. The smiles on both of their faces as they gaze at one another makes Riza’s heart feel full, and breaks it, at the same time.

Thankfully, Lan Fan joins her then. She has a plate of appetizers in hand and a tiny serving of wine in her own glass. The two women exchange a look of understanding. “Always on duty,” Riza says.

Lan Fan lifts her glass in a toast. Her quipao has a slit up the skirt to allow for easier movement in the event of an altercation. Unlike the clothing she wore in Ishval last year, this dress is sleeveless, revealing her automail arm in full. Riza is glad that she doesn’t seem self-conscious about it any longer. “To bodyguards.”

They clink their glasses together and drink. “To bodyguards,” Riza echoes. “What other weapons do you have on you tonight?”

Lan Fan’s eyes shine with mischief. “Guess.”

Riza considers. “Grenades?”

“Yep. Holstered at my leg.” Lan Fan turns her head, showing Riza her hairdo. “These hair sticks are nice and sharp, too.”

“Nice,” Riza says approvingly. She pats at her own hair. It’s growing out again, and the ends are just past her shoulders. “I should get a few of those.”

“I’ll mail you some from home.” Lan Fan munches on one of the mozzarella sticks on her plate. “Your hair comb is lovely. Did you get that when you were in Suzhao?”

“The General got it for me,” Riza admits, lowering her voice. 

Lan Fan smiles at her. “The Emperor got these hair sticks for me too. They know us well.” 

Riza remembers a quote from a poem she read once. “To be known is to be loved.”

Lan Fan blushes. Ling and Roy approach both of them, and Riza and Lan Fan exchange a look of slight alarm. Thankfully, Ling asks Riza to dance, and Roy asks Lan Fan. After one dance, though, Ling and Riza find themselves just beside Roy and Lan Fan. “Swap!” Ling announces cheerfully. He and Roy move with clearly practiced grace, Roy taking Riza’s hand, while Ling takes Lan Fan’s.

Lan Fan looks murderous as Ling sweeps her off. Riza is sure that expression is echoed in her own face, as Roy places one hand on the small of her back. “You two practiced that,” she accuses, under her breath. “Didn’t you?”

“Maybe,” Roy says, unrepentant. “The Emperor and I had a nice chat. We have a lot in common.”

The band is playing a beautiful slow song, and other couples have paired up too. Maria and Breda, Rebecca and Havoc, Fuery and Almasi. “We shouldn’t.” Riza hates how weak her protest sounds. She should step away from him; pull her hand free of his. She doesn’t.

“We’re among friends here.” Roy’s voice is just as quiet as hers. “I couldn’t go this entire night without dancing with you. Not tonight.”

They have never danced together before. They fall into step effortlessly, which doesn’t surprise Riza at all, until they’re standing just as close as Edward and Winry. Roy’s hand is warm in hers, their fingers intertwined together. They have never allowed themselves to be this close to one another in public. Roy’s left hand rests on the small of her back, and her chest presses against his. Riza can breathe in the scent of his aftershave.

The pain in her chest is sudden and sharp. There are going to be more weddings just like this, in the months and years to come. It’s only a matter of time before the rest of their unit gets married too. They will attend every one of the weddings, and listen to their friends make vows to one another, and wish them well. Her nerves feel rubbed raw. 

The song ends, switching to something much more fast-paced and energetic. Roy releases her with visible reluctance. “Come on,” he murmurs. “Let’s get out of here.”

Riza casts one look around and determines that everyone is sufficiently engaged with one another, to the point that no one should notice if the two of them slip away. They make their exit quietly. 

They take a cab back to the Resembool Inn, and sit as far from one another as they can in the backseat. They don’t look at one another or speak to one another, and stare straight ahead for the duration of the short ride. 

The Resembool Inn is at full capacity thanks to the Elric-Rockbell wedding guests alone. Thankfully, everyone else is still at the wedding. There is no one to see Roy place a hand on her back and lead her up the stairs, toward their rooms on the third floor. Riza is so on edge that she curls her hands into fists in order to subdue the temptation to push him against the wall of the stairwell. Roy’s hands fumble on the key to his room, and she can’t hold back a tiny, impatient sigh. He is so distracted that he doesn’t even tease her for it.

They barely manage to get the door open and lock it behind them before they fall into one another’s arms, kissing each other desperately. “My heart,” Roy breathes, breaking their kiss for a moment. He slips his hands up her skirt, undoing both of her thigh holsters, and pushing her skirt up to stroke her thighs. Riza runs her fingers through his hair, pressing herself against him, impatient to get closer. 

Roy lifts her into his arms with ease, carrying her to bed. Riza settles herself on his lap, placing her knees on either side of his hips. Her chest still hurts. She wants to tell him that she loves him, that she loves him so much, but she doesn’t trust herself to say the words aloud right now. She cups his face in both of her hands and pours all of her love into kisses instead, willing him to understand. Roy holds her tight, stroking her back in a way that makes her melt against him. He nuzzles her nose with his, and returns each kiss with equal hunger.

Riza pushes his dark suit coat off his shoulders and removes his tie, unbuttoning his shirt. Roy takes off his glasses, setting them on the nightstand, and unzips her dress. “This was nice,” he says, a little hoarsely. He helps her out of the dress, kissing her neck as he does so. “You looked so beautiful.”

Riza still can’t trust herself to remain silent about what matters. ( _ I want to marry you,  _ she wants to say.  _ I want for us to get married and have a family and live, just like the rest of our friends. _ ) So she keeps quiet, and undoes Roy’s belt instead, tossing it aside. She had picked out her prettiest lingerie for tonight, and Roy devotes a few moments to admiring her in it before removing it. Riza shivers under his touch. She’s so eager that she can hardly think straight.

She leans close, and bites back a moan at the feeling of her breasts against his chest, before pressing a kiss to his neck. “I love you,” Riza whispers. 

Roy pulls her on top of him, and rests his forehead against hers, cradling the back of her head in his hand. “I love you too.”

Riza doesn’t normally prefer being on top. But tonight, it is perfect for letting her work out her emotion; the maelstrom of love and longing and frustration and pain inside her. Roy grips her hips hard and runs his hands down her back, burying his face in her neck and her breasts, and she almost sobs. They’ve been together long enough that he knows what she needs, what she likes, without her having to ask. He brushes his fingers over her nipples, gently, patiently, kindling a fire in her and stroking it to greater and greater heights, until Riza has to muffle her cries in his shoulder. 

Roy hugs her tightly to him. His eyes are slightly wet when they finally untangle themselves from one another, and Riza kisses him underneath both eyes as they cuddle together.  _ This is enough,  _ Riza tells herself, resting her head on his chest.  _ This is enough.  _

* * *

_to be continued_

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everybody who left comments and kudos on the previous chapter! Reading them is always a highlight of my day/week. 
> 
> I am so sorry for the unexpected wait between the last chapter and this one. I ended up taking time to write the entire rest of the story, all the way to the last chapter. I needed to know exactly where I was going. It was an emotional experience to write this story to the end and explore further themes around justice and atonement, and I am so excited to share it with you. 
> 
> I really enjoyed writing this chapter, and I hope that it was worth the wait. I loved describing Ras Al-Ayn and how Riza's life becomes richer for the relationships she builds and strengthens there, even though being back in Ishval brings challenges for her. There were definitely some emotional moments to write, with Riza's conversations with her therapist Avery, around her PTSD and other aspects of her past. I wanted to be sensitive and respectful in the depiction of this content, and I hope that came across. 
> 
> "If I look back, I am lost," is a quote from Daenerys from A Song of Ice and Fire. The line Riza's therapist gives her, "You’re not an exception to human compassion," is adapted from a text post on tumblr about self-compassion and self-kindness that I've seen circulating there over the past years. 
> 
> On a lighter note - it made me so happy to write about Riza's healing and the joy she experienced over the chapter, with her friends and with Roy, and her sense of belonging in her new home. It was great to write a reunion of sorts at Ed and Winry's wedding, especially with Roy and Riza and Ling and Lan Fan :) 
> 
> Thank you for reading! I hope that you enjoyed it. I would really love to hear what you thought. Any comments will be appreciated so much. I am also on tumblr @lantur if you would like to connect. :) Take care!


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